Building Youth Homelessness Data Collaboration

Homelessness affects thousands of young people every day in Canada. For many of them, homelessness is a cycle. They use services from many agencies, shelters, and programs, often moving between different systems and supports.

When homeless youth seek support, they are often asked to repeat their story and give the same personal information. This is because many service organizations and government programs work independently of one another. This makes it hard for these service providers to follow a young person’s journey. It also makes it difficult to provide consistent, coordinated care.

Data collaboration can help address this challenge. Sharing the right information, in the right way, can support more informed referrals, faster access to resources, and reduced duplication of efforts. It can help identify youth at risk earlier and improve prevention efforts.

PolicyWise for Children & Families is addressing this issue by designing and testing a simple data collaboration initiative. Our initiative will help improve how services are coordinated for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. It explores how collaborative data use can:

• Strengthen policy and research
• Coordinate approaches to youth homelessness prevention

We are basing this work on emerging practices and real-world community experience. We are also engaging with community partners and youth. Our hope is that this community-based pilot will help inform other youth homelessness initiatives across Canada.