A Data Roadmap for Preventing
Youth Homelessness
About forty percent of individuals in Canada who face homelessness say that their first experience happened before age 16. They are stuck early in a pattern of repeated homelessness that could be avoidable by ‘making the shift’ from current crisis-oriented responses to one emphasising prevention.
To better support youth and prevent homelessness, we are designing a plan to build and use information across Canada. We are connecting governments, community organizations, and researchers to information. This information can help create better policies and research. And most importantly, it can help reduce homelessness.
We are leading activities in partnership with Dr. Yale Belanger and Making the Shift. Learning from previous practices, we are co-designing the plan with stakeholders across the homelessness sector. Youth with lived experiences of homelessness, Indigenous communities, and front-line organizations are central to our process.
Together, we are making the shift to prevent youth homelessness in Canada.
Project Team
Matthew Russell, Sakiko Yamaguchi, Shiva Zarezadeh Kheibari, Fatima Mustafa, and Mardi Daley
Project Resources:
Supplement 1: Canadian Data Infrastructure Scan – A scan of the state of existing Canadian administrative data* to support our plan.
Supplement 2: Making the Shift Project Interviews – An analysis of interviews with current Making the Shift project team members to inform our plan.
Supplement 3: Administrative Data Promising Practices – A literature review on promising practices for administrative data.*
*Administrative data is information collected by organizations for their operations. It can be linked to other information to help predict and prevent homelessness.
Related Resources:
Introduction to our project – Our partner, Making the Shift, sat down with us to chat about our project.
