The causes and conditions of youth homelessness are unique, and therefore so should be the solutions. It’s not as simple as duplicating responses to homelessness for the adult population. Our youth homelessness research agenda was developed and implemented in partnership with A Way Home Canada (AWHC) as well as the National Learning Community on Youth Homelessness and intersects with all of our other research priorities.
One of our major projects is Making the Shift – A Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab – which has a mandate to conduct and mobilize quality research to support governments, communities, and service providers to transition from managing the crisis of youth homelessness to focusing on prevention including enabling sustainable exits from homelessness. Co-led by the COH and AWHC, Making the Shift has implemented a number of demonstration projects to design, prototype, pilot and evaluate a range of prevention-focused interventions. In 2019 Making the Shift received funding from the Tri-Council’s Networks of Centres of Excellence program to greatly expand its research agenda focusing on the prevention of youth homelessness.