Serving Youth in an Economic Downturn
The Habits of Highly Successful Outreach Programs
A continual challenge of fulfilling the needs of homeless youth is comprehensive outreach services. When done well, outreach ensures underserved and hard-to-reach youth are aware of your work—and more likely to use your services. Follow in the “footsteps” of organizations who’ve implemented successful outreach programs.
Step 1: Educate your community about youth homelessness. “By making the community aware, it opens their eyes to what’s going on around them and then they say, ‘Oh my God, I’ve seen that kid a thousand times,’” says Kelli Brower, director of community relations for Florida Keys Children’s Shelter, in Tavernier. “You also have empowered them as to what they can do about it—it’s a matter of picking up the phone.”
Some strategies for getting your message out:
- Get out in front of a crowd. Brower speaks at Rotary Clubs, her local Chamber of Commerce, and other community groups. Invite youth to speak as well; you are speaking for their cause, they are speaking their life stories.
- Sign people up. Brower has 6,000 subscribers to her quarterly e-newsletter. She says she gets e-mail addresses “any way we can,” including having a subscription page on her organization’s Web site and passing out sign-up sheets every time she or other staff members speak in public. She also urges current subscribers to pass the newsletter on to a friend.
- Harness the power of film. Using a $500 grant, Traverse City, Michigan-based Third Level Crisis Center recently created a 17-minute documentary called “Homelessness: A Youth Perspective.” In it, six adolescents speak out about their experiences. The center unveiled the film last month at a benefit and plans to post it on YouTube, says Michael Hoepf, one of the center’s street outreach workers.
- Network on the social Web. See NCFY’s article on social networking sites, featured in the May 2009 issue of Youth Initiatives Update.
Go to www.do1thing.org for a look at a national effort to publicize the plight of homeless youth.
Step 2: Reach out directly to youth in at-risk situations and the people who come in contact with them. Street outreach workers spend a lot of time in poverty-stricken parts of town, handing out food and toiletries and building bonds with youth who may or may not want to come in off the streets. Here are some other things youth workers do to find homeless youth:
- Go back to school. Youth workers we spoke to cite schools as the top place they go to identify youth who need shelter. Talking to students—either formally, in class, or informally in the smoker’s alleys across the street from school—is an effective strategy, Hoepf says, because even if a student isn’t homeless, they know who is. Hoepf and Brower also say their organization’s counselors work very closely with school counselors to help youth in crisis and keep them off the streets.
- Give youth a place to drop by. Florida Keys Children’s Centers drop-in center offers showers, activities like art, sculpture, and music, and a safe place to be, Brower says. The center also enables staff to make an initial connection with street youth and to let them know that when they’re ready for an education, job, and place to sleep, staff can help. Third Level Crisis Center’s summer programs serve a similar function, drawing youth in with free picnics, day trips, and kayaking.
- Leave your calling card. Good places to post or hand out your brochures or business cards include soup kitchens, food pantries, skate parks, and other places homeless young people might frequent.
- Work with the police. In collaboration with its local sheriff’s department, Florida Keys Children’s Shelter will roll out a new program in which officers carry a tip sheet in their car to help them know what to do when they encounter runaway youth, and in particular situations in which young people have been abused. Brower also has trained police so they know which youth are eligible for her organization’s services.
- Collaborate with like-minded folks. Tracie Musso, street outreach program coordinator at Tumblewood Runaway Program in Billings, Montana, recommends making presentations about your services to groups like the Salvation Army and rescue missions, which primarily serve needy adults but might also come across young people who need your help.
- Positively promote programs to families. You can get one step ahead of youth homelessness, Brower says, by letting families in conflict know that you offer a safe place where youth can have a “cooling off period.” If your organization provides family services, collaborate with staff in that department. Or, work with other human services groups that cater to families.
- Cultivate relationships with adult homeless people. “They don’t have Blackberries, but they do know of each other,” Brower says, and often want to protect youth who land on the streets.
Step 3: Be creative about reaching those experiencing homelessness for the first time as a result of the current economy. “A few youth here have come because their parents can no longer afford them. Many of them are absolutely mortified and don’t want to acknowledge they need help,” says Stephen Bardy, executive director of Safe Harbor Runaway Center in West Palm Beach, Florida.
- Follow the trail. Bardy says his organization has done aggressive outreach in bargain shopping locales, such as Wal-Mart. He said this is often a tell-tale sign of families experiencing financial difficulties, and where you may be able to catch them “before they experience the straw that breaks the camel’s back.” He has, and many families have dropped off their youth as a result.
- Make it multisystem. Nonprofits in this area champion often the cause of partnerships to make their limited resources go further, but RHY professionals could learn a lesson from the efforts of San Diego Youth Services (SDYS), which joined a coalition of law enforcement, health care institutions, and school systems, to share information about youth they come into contact with. After reaching formal interagency agreements with each partner and clearing health information privacy issues, the team now has a greater ability to track youth. Dozens of the same recently homeless adolescent girls, for example, had been seen by hospitals and police within a space of four days, but “none of the systems were talking to each other,” says Steven Jella, associate executive director. Now police, school officials, and hospitals are part of the organization’s outreach program, and SDYS is able to get the often frightened young people more of the help they need.
For more information about street outreach, including safety tips, read the July 2007 issue of The Exchange, “Street Outreach Programs Reach Out to Youth with Diverse Needs.”
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