Towards Preventing Youth Homelessness

A Collaboration Pilot to Enhance Service Access

Download the full report here: Towards Preventing Youth Homelessness (PDF)

Authors

Emilie Bassi, Research & Policy Associate
Kayla Blackadar, Research & Policy Associate
Rachel Carr, Manager, Strategic Initiatives
Kiran Gurm, Senior Research & Policy Associate

Introduction

Background

Youth homelessness is a complex and urgent issue in Canada, affecting thousands of young people who often lack the resources and support to transition successfully into adulthood. For many young people, homelessness is part of a cycle of moving between systems. Breaking this cycle requires coordinated, youth-centred solutions, yet many social service agencies, shelters, and government programs operate in silos. This lack of integration can result in inconsistent services, repeated assessments, and gaps in care. Responsible data sharing can enable informed referrals, streamline service access, reduce duplication, and identify at-risk youth earlier.

The Government of Canada funded a project with PolicyWise for Children & Families to build and pilot a simple data collaboration initiative in Calgary, Alberta. The goal of the initiative was to use data sharing to support coordinated service access for youth who are homeless or at risk of homelessness, while generating lessons to inform similar efforts across Canada. This report describes the pilot and shares key insights and recommendations from the experience.

We hope the lessons learned and tools developed through this pilot extend beyond these two participating organizations. Agencies and programs embarking on collaborative initiatives involving data sharing can use this report as a starting point for structuring early conversations and building a sustainable, secure partnership.

Project Objectives

This work focused on the following three objectives:

Perform an environmental scan of data-sharing collaborations that support vulnerable populations and identify promising practices.
Build and test a community-based collaborative data sharing approach to support coordinated service access among organizations supporting youth who are homeless or at risk of being homeless.
Conduct a developmental evaluation to support continuous quality improvement, monitor development, design, and early pilot implementation, and capture learnings to share across Canada.

In this report, we document the process and findings related to objectives two and three. Objective one resulted in a separate report outlining key considerations for data collaboration. This foundational report that informed the pilot project approach can be found here.

The Pilot Project

Building and Testing a Community-Based Data Sharing Collaborative

This section briefly outlines the journey of the community-based data collaboration. We describe the work in three phases: initiating, developing, and implementing the pilot. Initially, we envisioned the pilot as a clearly defined approach or tool to support data collaboration. We quickly learned that the pilot was not a single activity, but rather the ongoing process of building the collaboration itself.

Pilot Partners

Trellis Society: a non-profit organization based in Calgary, Alberta that works alongside young people, families, and communities to support growth in all areas of their lives.

The Alex: a non-profit organization located in Calgary, Alberta that serves individuals with complex health challenges.

Initiating the Pilot

The initiation phase was exploratory, focusing on conceptualizing what the collaboration could become. The primary goals were to:

Understand the current landscape
Identify opportunities to improve service coordination
Establish trusting partnerships

To inform planning, we reviewed existing data-sharing and collaboration initiatives across relevant sectors. We then synthesized the insights into a report that highlighted key considerations for building a collaborative approach to sharing data.

Initial meetings with Trellis focused on understanding internal and external data sharing practices, including referral pathways, intake processes, consent procedures, and data systems.

These discussions revealed complexities and barriers to information sharing, administrative burden related to funder data requirements, and the importance of aligning collaboration with service realities. As a result, we began with a single partner organization to manage workload and develop a sustainable approach before scaling.

The Alex was identified as a suitable choicebased on complementary services, existing relationships, and shared values. Once The Alex was onboarded, joint planning meetings allowed both organizations to map how client data is collected, used, and stored and to identify shared interests to inform the collaboration.

Key takeaways from this phase:

This phase could not be rushed or treated like a checklist of activities. It progressed gradually at the pace and comfort of partners and participating staff.
Partners entered with different levels of familiarity and readiness, highlighting the importance of early engagement and investing in consistent onboarding and shared language.
Starting with two organizations helped contain the pilot and design a sustainable process.
Connecting data discussions directly to day-to-day service delivery was essential for meaningful collaboration.
Despite the challenges, this phase established a strong foundation of shared purpose and trust, and surfaced exciting opportunities to better support youth.

Developing the Pilot

The development phase focused on refining ideas through an iterative process of learning, brainstorming, defining, and decision-making.

The primary goals were to:

Identify programs from each organization that could benefit from stronger or more formalized collaboration.
Determine the mechanism or activities needed to improve coordination.
Assess the feasibility and potential impact of proposed pilot activities.

To support ongoing dialogue and maintain momentum, we formed a working group with representatives from Trellis, The Alex, and PolicyWise. These meetings provided a structured space to learn from one another, ensure shared intentions, and make decisions about the pilot. The group established shared values to guide their collaboration culture, including a commitment to client-centred practice, clear communication, mutual respect, trauma-informed care, and a willingness to learn from one another.

To identify potential pilot activities and ground the collaboration in day-to-day service realities, we facilitated structured staff engagement sessions. These included a session to identify barriers and a client journey mapping session in which staff mapped a typical client experience across five stages: outreach or first contact, intake or referral, assessment, support and services, and transition or exit. An impact-effort matrix was then used to assess and prioritize collaboration ideas.

Key takeaways from this phase:

This phase required balancing enthusiasm with focus. While many promising ideas emerged, the pilot’s limited timeframe required prioritizing activities that were realistic and actionable.
Structured facilitation was essential to move from discussion to decisions. Tangible tools such as templates, matrices, and reflective documents helped guide the process.
Potential pilot activities were grouped into two categories:
1. Relationship and awareness-building activities
2. Tools and resources for data sharing
Engaging frontline staff ensured that proposed activities reflected organizational capacity and the realities of service delivery.

Implementing the Pilot

The implementation phase marked the transition from planning and designing to active execution. The primary goals were to:

Implement the selected pilot activities, focusing on relationship and awareness-building activities first.
Ensure meaningful participation across organizations.
Continue refining activities through interactive learning.

Both organizations began launching activities while coordinating across busy teams, navigating unexpected challenges and changes, and introducing the pilot approach to staff beyond the working group.

The first foundational activity was peer walkthroughs, where each partner hosted a site visit, allowing staff to tour physical spaces, meet team members, and gain a deeper understanding of how programs and services operate. Through these exchanges, two programs were selected as the primary partnership focus: Trellis Society’s All in For Youth (AIFY) program and The Alex’s Youth Health Bus. Both programs focus on high school students and work with many of the same Calgary high schools, creating a natural opportunity to build on existing processes, connections, and shared clients.

The second foundational activity was a ‘Lunch and Learn’ information session focused specifically on these two programs. During the session, both teams presented their services, answered questions, and planned how warm handoffs and other forms of collaboration could occur.

Key takeaways from this phase:

Data collaboration is not linear. Backtracking and revisiting earlier conversations are part of the process, and building that into the plan helps prevent confusion or overwhelm.
Engaging additional staff with deeper knowledge of day-to-day operations highlighted the need for flexibility, responsiveness, and intentional onboarding to maintain shared understanding.
Each organization brings its own risk tolerance, procedures, and accountability structures to collaboration. Establishing shared language around key terms, such as “data sharing,” was essential, given how teams and individuals interpreted them differently.
As the project progressed, partners took a more proactive and independent role, showing increasing ownership and investment in the collaboration.

Current State

Since the start of the work, the partnership has progressed in several key ways:

Increased ownership by partners. At the beginning, facilitation and momentum were primarily driven by PolicyWise. Now, staff from Trellis and The Alex are planning activities, setting meetings, and driving the work themselves.
Shared understanding of one another’s organizations. At the beginning, facilitation and momentum were primarily driven by PolicyWise. Now, staff from Trellis and The Alex are planning activities, setting meetings, and driving the work themselves.
Better connected teams. Staff now have cross-organizational relationships and plan to maintain an up-to-date shared contact list. This supports faster, smoother referrals and quicker access to critical services for youth.
Clearer pathways for referring clients. The agencies have determined how they will obtain client consent for warm handoffs. Clear referral pathways reduce the need for youth to repeat their stories, enable staff to close the loop on referrals, and ensure youth receive the services they need.

Next Steps

The AIFY and Mobile Health teams will engage in warm handoffs and meet as needed to discuss learnings or update their processes. We have also documented the opportunities for further collaboration that were identified by staff from Trellis and The Alex throughout the pilot. We have presented these in an internal document to senior leadership at both organizations to inform their continued collaborative journey.

Findings

To support continuous quality improvement, monitor pilot implementation, and capture learnings, we conducted a developmental evaluation. This involved embedding the evaluation team within the working group, engaging in ongoing reflection, sharing real-time learnings, and adapting approaches based on these learnings. This section highlights key insights from the pilot project and offers practical recommendations for organizations interested in starting or strengthening a data-sharing collaboration.

Lessons Learned

Invest early and intentionally in building trust and shared understanding.

Impactful, secure, and sustainable data sharing depends on strong relationships, trust, and shared understanding. Building that foundation required time to learn about each other’s organizations, programs, and processes. Discussions surfaced new questions and uncovered differing assumptions. These conversations built the comfort and confidence needed to discuss complex and sensitive topics.

Recommendations:

Prioritize relationship-building from the outset through structured learning opportunities such as peer walkthroughs or program deep dives.
Move at the speed of trust, and build flexible timelines that acknowledge that trust-building and knowledge take time and may progress unevenly across partners.
Facilitate inclusive, well-structured discussions that create space for questions, differing perspectives, and collective sense-making.
Document insights, key decisions, and questions to maintain shared understanding and momentum over time.

Internal readiness and culture shape external data collaboration.

Effective data collaboration requires a clear understanding of one’s internal capacity, existing practices, and staff perceptions. Throughout the pilot, differences in comfort, internal infrastructure, and collaboration approaches influenced how the work unfolded. Hesitation around data, driven by privacy concerns, legislative ambiguity, or fear of making mistakes, added another layer of complexity. Even when partners share values or goals, their cultures or levels of readiness to share data may differ. Understanding each organization’s starting point helped create a more realistic plan for moving forward.

Recommendations:

Assess internal readiness and reflect on current data infrastructure, governance, internal sharing processes, and staff attitudes toward data and risk.
Map existing informal collaboration by asking frontline staff what information sharing is already happening to support client needs.
Strengthen internal data-sharing processes by identifying current challenges and testing approaches before expanding to external data collaboration.
Build staff confidence by providing clear guidance on privacy, legislation, and acceptable practices, and create space for staff to discuss concerns.

Clear purpose and expectations keep collaborations focused.

Data collaborations require clear purpose, scope, and desired outcomes. This collaboration began with an open-ended mandate which, while generative and exploratory, also introduced ambiguity. As new ideas emerged and new participants joined the working group, discussions occasionally drifted without a clear reference point. Clarifying purpose and outcomes helped refocus the work and support decision-making. Shared language was also important. Without clear definitions, discussions could lead to confusion or concern. Establishing shared expectations provided structure while still allowing room for innovation.

Recommendations:

Document a clear intention and end state early using a simple project charter or logic model to outline the problem, outcomes, scope, roles, and risks, and mitigation strategies.
Define key terms explicitly and revisit
them regularly, especially when onboarding new participants, drafting documentation,
or refining scope.
Clarify the intended level of collaboration early on, as different types of coordination, from warm handoffs to coordinated
case management, carry different
data considerations.
Start small by focusing on achievable activities first to build momentum and distinguish between “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves” as the collaboration develops.

Engage the right people at the right time.

Successful data collaboration depends on engaging the right individuals at the appropriate stages of a project. This includes those with relevant knowledge, decision-making authority, operational insight, and implementation capacity. In this pilot, progress accelerated once the focus shifted from broad organizational participation to specific programs and involved team members with decision-making authority. Bringing new participants into the process at later stages required pausing to onboard, recap project history, and re-establish shared understanding. Power imbalances and varying levels of experience also affected engagement.

Recommendations:

Develop clear onboarding processes and maintain up-to-date project summaries. Consider allocating separate time for onboarding.
Map roles across each organization, identify who can inform, decide, implement, and champion the work.
Be deliberate about who joins and why, consider beginning with specific programs or teams rather than entire organizations, and ensure decision-making authority is clear from outset.
Engage multiple roles over time, including frontline staff, program managers, leadership, and evaluation teams, to surface diverse perspectives and reduce holdups.
Dedicate capacity to the collaboration rather than relying on “side-of-desk” efforts and designate roles and resources to
steward work.

Simple tools and processes facilitate progress and build capacity.

Throughout the pilot, partners identified many potential opportunities for collaboration and expressed enthusiasm for learning and discussion. However, uncertainty about the pilot’s direction and next steps sometimes slowed decision-making, particularly when new members joined.

Introducing simple, structured tools helped address this. Meeting agendas, fillable templates, and decision-making frameworks helped summarize ideas, clarify priorities, and guide discussion. For example, an impact and feasibility matrix helped the group assess which activities were realistic within the pilot’s timeline and capacity. Over time, facilitation shifted toward encouraging working group members to lead discussions and connect between meetings. This helped build ownership, accountability, and confidence.

Recommendations:

Document the process by circulating meeting notes that summarize key discussions, decisions, and next steps after each meeting.
Use simple, transferable tools like basic fillable forms or structured activities to facilitate initial discussions and provide templates that can be applied to future work.
Be responsive to shifting needs by regularly checking in on what members can realistically commit to and adjust support accordingly.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the organizations and individuals that offered their time to participate in interviews that informed this report. We appreciate their commitment to openly sharing knowledge, experiences, and perspectives.