Melanie.Redman's blog

Canadian Thanksgiving just passed. As an American I’m still a bit perplexed at the timing of this wonderful holiday, but it does make sense to align it with the actual harvest. Well done, Canada. So, what am I thankful for? I can’t help but be incredibly thankful for the leadership, passion, vision and hard work communities across the country are bringing to the table to get the job of preventing and ending youth homelessness done, once and for all.

In 2013 the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness in collaboration with the Hamilton Street Youth Planning Collaborative and the National Learning Community on Youth Homelessness created a framework for adapting Housing First to meet the developmental needs of young people.

I recently heard a young person with lived experience of homelessness offering recommendations to A Way Home America and senior policy makers. He said that funding more services and supports for youth experiencing homelessness is great, but it’s not good enough. He talked about the damage to his life caused by his experiences in foster care and then later with homelessness. He came back again and again to the role of schools in preventing youth homelessness. He asked why we aren’t putting more effort and emphasis on school-based early intervention.

In an earlier blog post I shared with you an overview of everything that the A Way Home Canada coalition has accomplished to date and a few highlights of what was coming down the line, including the recently released Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit and the Youth Rights, Right Now! Ending Youth Homelessness: A Human Rights Guide.

Last summer I was fortunate to meet Leilani Farha, the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, at a conference concerning the legal needs of street youth. I hung on to her every word, as it makes so much sense to ground our arguments and strategies concerning youth homelessness in international human rights law.

I am pleased to announce the launch of a free and open-source online resource to support communities and planners in their quests to develop and implement comprehensive plans to prevent and end youth homelessness, the Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit.

As I look out my office window at the trees and flowers in bloom, I’m reminded that it has only been six months since we launched A Way Home with the support of a range of organizations and partners in Canada, but also international partners such as FEANTSA, the UN and the U.S. federal government.