A Way Home: Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit Developed with support from ALINA TURNER the Government of Ontario. Contents GETTING READY Introduction 1 Toolkit Development 3 An Indigenous Module 4 About A Way Home 5 A Primer on Youth Homelessness 6 Plans to End Youth Homelessness 11 The Youth Plan as Collective Impact 18 Conditions for Collective Impact Success 21 Essential Plan Elements 24 System Planning & Integration in Brief 28 Considerations for Regionalized Approaches 32 Building on Broader Homelessness Plans 35 Determining Community Readiness 38 GETTING STARTED Building the Planning Team 52 Developing a Workplan & Budget 68 Laying the Foundation 72 Developing Guiding Principles 74 GETTING GOING Grounding your Plan in Evidence 82 The Consultation Process 97 Engaging Youth 106 Considerations for Engagement with Indigenous People 113 Working with Funders 122 Engaging and Influencing Government 125 Building Community Support 144 GETTING IT DONE Writing the Plan 145 Sample Plan Overview 146 Developing Plan Goals 150 Plan Costs & Performance 157 Developing Targets & Performance Indicators 167 Launching the Plan 170 Implementation Considerations 171 ADDITIONAL RESOURCES APPENDIX A – ONTARIO’S HOUSING AND HOMELESSNESS SYSTEM Acknowledgements Melanie Redman, A Way Home, Toronto Mary-Jane McKitterick, A Way Home, Toronto Stephen Gaetz, Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, Toronto Dave French, Alberta Human Services, Edmonton Sheldon Pollett, Choices for Youth, St. John’s Giri Puligandlia, Homeward Trust, Edmonton Kim Wirth, Boys & Girls Clubs of Calgary, Calgary Kelly Holmes, Ray, Winnipeg Naomi Leadbeater, Brandon Neighbourhood Renewal Association, Brandon, Manitoba Debbie Bentley-Lauzon, Wyndham House, Guelph Greg Bishop, Saint John Human Development Council, Saint John Iris Hamlyn, Sidedoor, Yellowknife Albert McLeod, Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, Winnipeg Christina Maes Nino, Social Planning Council of Winnipeg, Winnipeg Mike Bulthuis, Alliance to End Homelessness Ottawa, Ottawa Deborah Hierlihy, Oriole Research & Design Inc. A Way Home: Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit Getting Ready INTRODUCTION To support the enhanced capacity to respond to youth homelessness in communities across Canada, A Way Home has developed this toolkit to help communities create plans to prevent, reduce and end homelessness among young people. A Way Home is committed to Considerable efforts are underway to effectively address supporting communities to youth homelessness in Canada. These efforts have advance evidence-based and culminated in the creation of A Way Home – a national strategic solutions, including coalition focused on mobilizing communities and all levels the development of plans of government to take action on youth homelessness, to prevent, reduce and end youth homelessness. locally and at systems level. A Way Home is committed to supporting communities to implement evidence-based solutions, including the development of plans to prevent, reduce and end youth homelessness. Such plans act as a stimulus for local and systemic change as part of a collective action to combat youth homelessness. Ending youth homelessness involves a number of critical elements and actions. These include the implementation of innovative programs and housing solutions tailored for the specific needs of young people and structural changes within the operations of homeless-serving systems. The transformation of public systems, including child welfare, education, mental health, income supports and criminal justice and their enhanced integration, which can facilitate broad systems of care, is essential. Dynamics unique to each community must be accounted for in local efforts and plans to end youth homelessness. For instance, the overrepresentation of particular demographics in the local homeless population, such as Indigenous youth, makes a difference in the design of interventions. Further, addressing the issue in rural or urban settings considerably impacts system planning approaches and resources needed. 1 A Way Home: Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit THIS TOOLKIT: THE TOOLKIT IS ORGANIZED »» Outlines the key elements of a systems INTO FOUR MAIN SECTIONS: approach to prevent, reduce and end youth homelessness using best and 1 GETTING READY promising practices; »»Background on this toolkit »» Provides guidance to local communities »» Introduction to youth homelessness on a step-by-step approach to develop and youth plans »»Essential elements of youth plans plans that advance solutions to end youth homelessness; »» Highlights Canadian examples of innovation and locally developed 2 GETTING STARTED resources to enhance knowledge »» Collective Impact and ending exchange to advance the national youth homelessness movement to end youth homelessness; »»Determining community readiness »» Developing your backbone »» Is not intended to reinvent the wheel; infrastructure and workplan where resources are readily available it points the reader to these as appropriate and draws on existing 3 GETTING GOING research and materials throughout. »» Research, needs assessment, and data analysis The toolkit is a resource for organizations »»Consultation approach and/or individuals considering or leading »» Working with key stakeholders, community efforts to develop strategic including youth, government, etc responses to youth homelessness. Most likely, you are working in or with non-profit, government, lived experience and private 4 GETTING IT DONE sector stakeholders to explore your next »»Writing the plan steps. This toolkit will help you map out »» Determining costs and what needs to be done to get you started, performance measures cross the finish line and beyond. »»Implementation considerations 2 A Way Home: Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit TOOLKIT DEVELOPMENT The toolkit development process involved research and key stakeholder consultation to collect and review existing promising practices from a variety of communities across Canada at various stages of youth plan development and implementation. The research also draws on U.S., U.K. Though the primary focus and Australian best practices literature to complement the of this toolkit is on local Canadian findings. community plans it has applicability to provincial/ Communities of different sizes are highlighted to ensure the territorial plans as well. toolkit’s relevance across Canada; provincial approaches are also included. Key stakeholders with experience developing and/or implementing youth plans provided input into the final toolkit, along with materials that can be used as resources. Note that one of these plans (Alberta) is provincial in scope; though the primary focus of this toolkit is on local community plans it has applicability to provincial/territorial plans as well. Table 1: Youth Plans Across Canada and the U.S. COMMUNITY STAGE Kingston, ON Implementation Kamloops, BC Implementation Seattle, U.S. Implementation Edmonton, AB Implementation Calgary, AB Development after initial implementation Cochrane, AB Implementation Wellington County, ON Development Saint John, NB Development St. John’s, NL Pre-development Brandon, MB Development Yellowknife, NWT Development Winnipeg, MB Development Alberta Implementation Ottawa, ON Pre-development 3 A Way Home: Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit AN INDIGENOUS MODULE We must acknowledge the experience of Indigenous people in Canada if we are to truly end youth homelessness, particularly in light of their consistent overrepresentation in vulnerable populations. Indigenous homelessness is notably different; the structural and systemic determinants A Way Home is working to associated with colonialism, the Indian Act, treaty making, complement this toolkit with a residential schools and the Sixties Scoop have resulted more robust Indigenous module in considerable discriminatory impacts that are in fact which includes resources specific to Indigenous youth intergenerational (Plan to End Aboriginal Homelessness in homelessness. Calgary, p. 1). It is further important to highlight that being homeless can be experienced from diverse perspectives: cultural, spiritual or emotional. It is more than a loss of housing. The impact of colonization, residential schooling, intergenerational trauma, ongoing discrimination and racism in Canadian society has contributed to the ongoing systematic marginalization of Indigenous people, including Indigenous youth (Calgary’s Updated Plan to End Homelessness, p. 23). Recognizing these critical issues, A Way Home is working to complement this toolkit with a more robust Indigenous module, which includes resources specific to Indigenous youth homelessness. 4 A Way Home: Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit ABOUT A WAY HOME A Way Home is a national coalition A Way Home offers communities across dedicated to preventing, reducing and Canada a range of tools and strategies to ending youth homelessness in Canada. support the national movement to end Through a ‘collective impact’ framework youth homelessness, including: we inspire and enable communities and »» Collective impact, ‘theory of change,’ all levels of government to organize, plan implementation support and and implement strategies to address youth opportunities for implementation homelessness in a coordinated, measurable grants delivered in partnership with the and impactful way. By strengthening McConnell Foundation’s Youth Collective families and building the assets and Impact Initiatives; resilience of youth, we can