{"id":3348,"date":"2019-09-03T16:01:16","date_gmt":"2019-09-03T06:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/?p=3348"},"modified":"2019-09-03T16:02:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T06:02:21","slug":"finding-a-place-to-call-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/2019\/09\/03\/finding-a-place-to-call-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding a place to call home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reducing the impact of homelessness for young people through establishing a foundation for prevention, breaking down stereotypes, giving young people a voice, understanding and learning from their unique experiences, and empowering them through connecting them with appropriate services.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Dr
Dr Jess Heerde<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Homelessness in young people is multifaceted and essentially refers to individuals who have no permanent fixed address or a safe place to call home.<\/p>\n

Young people can find themselves in unstable living situations that can range from uncomfortable to distressing and dangerous which is particularly challenging as often these circumstances are out of their control.<\/p>\n

Currently more than 15% of young people, aged between 16-25 years, experience homelessness in Australia.<\/p>\n

Dr Jess Heerde, a Westpac Research Fellow from the Department of Paediatrics, Melbourne Medical School (and an Honorary Fellow, Centre for Adolescent\u00a0Health)<\/em>, has been engaged in decade long research to comprehensively understand the factors leading to and the lived experience of young people who experience homelessness.<\/p>\n

\u201cHomelessness is more than \u2018rough sleeping\u2019 where young people may be sleeping in a park or building or directly on the street,\u201d Dr Heerde said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt includes those who are \u2018couch surfing\u2019 or sleeping in their car, and those accessing transitional housing or in crisis or temporary accommodation,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAssisting young people experiencing homelessness requires an integrated and intersectional approach; and sometimes addressing the immediate concerns, like housing, while important, doesn\u2019t resolve the bigger picture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy research is seeking to understand how and why young people become homeless, what they go through while experiencing homelessness, and how we can support the transition from homelessness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Heerde is examining the influence of a broad range of individual, family, peer, school and community factors, through the International Youth Development Study<\/a> (IYDS), which looks at healthy and problematic behaviours in young people in Victoria (Australia) and Washington State (USA), as predictors of homelessness.<\/p>\n

Her research has found associations between family and school factors in young people aged 13-14 years for homelessness at 25 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cPrevention approaches take time to show effect and it\u2019s often difficult to obtain funding to implement these programs,\u201d Dr Heerde said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur research is showing emerging evidence on outcomes for prevention-based approaches in, for example, family environments, schooling and violence, to reduce the risk of later homelessness,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Dr Heerde also works with young people who are currently experiencing homelessness where she has found no two lived experiences for young people are the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve interviewed more than 60 young people who are experiencing homelessness and asked them how they got there, what is happening with them, how they interact with services and what their outlook is for the future beyond homelessness,\u201d Dr Heerde said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy approach is to make the young person and their experiences the central focus, they own their own data, they are the leader, and as a researcher I have a responsibility to accurately and honestly convey their stories and ensure the information is used in a way to create positive change,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Finding<\/p>\n

Dr Heerde operates at the interface to empower young people and connect them with services to lessen the impact of homelessness, shorten the experience and share their stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cConducting this research requires two levels of trust \u2013 from youth organisations and from the young people themselves \u2013 my research is very much about rapport building and putting the young person first in order to foreground their experiences,\u201d Dr Heerde said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome young people are very aware of services and access them, however, others have a sense of wariness which could be related to prior negative experiences,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere may be reluctance to seek help from services resulting from shame or stigma or the need to keep constantly telling their story to access services.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe youth organisations I work with, however, are remarkable; and they run a lot of programs to help young people manage and connect them with the right support to address the multitude of experiences they are having.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Heerde said recognising the strength these young people possess has been one of the keys to her research success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are the picture of resilience in many ways and we have a lot to learn from their experience,\u201d Dr Heerde said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredibly important to breakdown negative stereotypes as there is a perception these young people are purposefully violent and deviant,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy research has found that these behaviours are frequently out of survival and self-protection.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are trying to change the mindset in society; these things are happening because young people just don\u2019t feel safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr Heerde has worked with a group of young people, for example, who spoke about their interactions with police while experiencing homelessness.<\/p>\n

We are now engaging these young people alongside police and the community to breakdown these perceptions through communicating their experience with homelessness, she said.<\/p>\n

Working across theory, prevention and practice translation in homelessness among young people is personally enriching and rewarding for Dr Heerde.<\/p>\n

\u201cHomelessness is not forever, and young people are not irreparably damaged,\u201d Dr Heerde said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have often been through experiences which make them incredibly strong and resilient and they have a lot to offer and want to contribute to society just like everyone else,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had highly anxious young people at the beginning of their interview make very little eye contact, and by the end of the process shake my hand and thank me for the opportunity to be heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about going in to an interview and asking young people to give me information \u2013 my approach is I\u2019m here and I\u2019m listening to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

This article was first published on the University of Melbourne, Melbourne Medical School<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Jess Heerde on reducing the impact of homelessness for young people through establishing a foundation for prevention, breaking down stereotypes, and giving young people a voice. Read the interview. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":156,"featured_media":3353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/156"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3348"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3352,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3348\/revisions\/3352"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/cah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}