Young adults who grew up in family foster care, residential care or both are overrepresented in the homeless statistics internationally. The research project Exploring homelessness among young care leavers: Addressing challenges and finding potentials in a Nordic welfare context (HACL) wants to understand why this is the case from the perspective of these young people.
“We are focusing on how they experience the risk of being homeless when they leave out-of-home care to understand when the critical moments are that lead to homelessness and what kind of support they need”, says project leader Anne-Kirstine Mølholt, Senior Researcher at VIVE – The Danish Centre for Social Science Research.
In an international context, some Nordic countries have managed to turn around their youth homelessness statistics in recent years. The project, which is funded by NordForsk, hopes to further this development by gathering more knowledge on the subject and broadening the view through a life course perspective that includes the young people's background and upbringing.
The first work package of the project, a literature review, showed that there generally is very limited knowledge in this field of research both in the Nordic countries and internationally. The existing research on the intersection between leaving out-of-home care and homelessness is to 80 percent based in the US and Canada and it is mostly quantitative. It also focuses on a narrow understanding of homelessness.
“Our point of departure is that we need a broader understanding of homelessness as more than just sleeping rough. Couchsurfing, for example, is also experiencing homelessness because you don’t have a safe home and don’t know for sure that you have a roof over your head in the next couple of days”, Mølholt says.
Fragile sense of home
The second work package of the project includes interviews with care leavers age 18 to 24 in five Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland.
“From the interviews, we have found that it is not just about providing these young adults with a place to stay but ensuring them a place that truly feels like home.”
Housing pathways drawn by the researchers during interviews illustrate that housing to these young people is a very fragile experience. They have lived in many different places when growing up and having a stable home is unique to them.
“The transition from precarious home conditions during childhood to becoming an adult and getting their own home is a big turning point in the lives of these young people. They need support during this transition, but it is rarely considered in welfare practice. Instead, welfare services for children and adults are often kept separate”, says Mølholt.
Supporting young care leavers with storage spaces
Anne-Kirstine Mølholt points out that there still is much to learn about all the arenas and nuances it takes to support the young care leavers in having equal opportunities as their peers. A concrete suggestion she can give based on the early findings of the project is an initiative to support them with storage spaces.
“One 22-year-old girl we interviewed wanted to go to Danish ‘folkehøjskole’ like many of her peers. When attending you are required to board at the school for half a year which left the interviewee no other option than to give up her apartment and sell all her furniture as she did not have the means to store it nor family to help. To then try settle a new home again afterwards is not easy nor cheap and the risk of homelessness high.”
The last two work packages of the project are part of a PhD thesis that focuses on social workers in the five Nordic countries to understand if and how social workers take into account the risk of homelessness when helping young people with a care background to start an independent adult life. The aim is to provide policy recommendations for social workers on how to best work with these young people.
“We look at what child and adult welfare services should consider when working with young people who have grown up in out-of-home care. Our recommendations for measures and initiatives are based on aspects that the young people themselves have identified as important and that they believe would help them when they leave care”, Mølholt says.
Read more about the project: Exploring Homelessness Among Young Care Leavers (HACL) - VIVE
