Partnering with homeless youth to study the scope and nature of youth homelessness

A youth participatory approach was used to conduct a needs assessment on the scope and nature of youth homelessness in an upstate New York community. In this unique and innovative university/community partnership, we collaborated with a group of formerly homeless youth to carry out the study. The youth were involved in all aspects of the project from designing the tools and methodology, to recruiting subjects, collecting the data, interpreting the findings, and presenting results to key community stakeholders. There have been three waves of data collection in the project from 2004-2012 which has enabled us to examine change over time. Partnering with homeless youth was integral to the success of this project: it enabled us to gather data on the hard-to-reach homeless population, deepened understanding of the findings, and led to increased community awareness and system level change. The multiple benefits of this approach will be discussed as a strategy to promote positive youth development, advance knowledge, impact policy, and improve services for homeless youth.