The Family and Natural Supports (FNS) intervention aims to prevent youth homelessness. As part of the Making the Shift Youth Homelessness Social Innovation Lab, which sought to test the efficacy of this youth homelessness prevention program, we had the unique opportunity to learn about the experiences of youth and family members involved in the FNS approach through in-depth interviews. In this blog, we explore the impact of the FNS intervention’s wraparound approach and how it addresses some unique issues youth have presented.
What Is the FNS Approach?
FNS aims to prevent youth homelessness by reconnecting youth with their families and chosen natural supports. Natural supports are the adults in addition to their immediate family members that the youth has identified as being part of their support network—for instance, some commonly cited natural supports are legal guardians, family friends, and sports coaches. More importantly, the FNS approach is a wraparound service that seeks to be flexible and holistic, and the framework is grounded in the notion of “meeting the youth and families where they’re at.”
This blog will particularly focus on youth narratives compiled from qualitative interviews conducted with youth throughout their participation in the FNS program. These narratives deal with how FNS’s framework has helped provide wraparound supports for youth to address their unique needs. These supports were of two broad types: emotional and material.
Read the COH’s full report on the FNS framework!
Emotional Support
Emotional support is essential when working with youth. The current literature highlights how this type of support is vital for increasing youths’ ability to transition into adulthood. The FNS approach provides emotional support tailored to the youth’s goals. An important consideration is that emotional support may take different forms for each individual youth.
Below is a quotation from a youth that exemplifies flexible emotional support. To provide some context, this youth mentioned in the interview that they’d been in support programs before. They highlighted how some workers were effective, but none showed that they really cared for them. Moreover, they expressed how their anger issues and mental health resulted in conflict with previous workers. When asked what the most impactful part of the program for them was, this is how they responded:
“Um, honestly, uh, it was when [FNS worker] would just used to come pick me up from when I used to live at my house. Um, come pick me up from my house, and we’re just going, maybe like an hour drive, gonna walk somewhere, and just talk about how the week went, and that, and that was pretty good because I’d normally didn’t have anyone to like, kind of express how my week went and how I can improve from the way I like, respond to people and stuff like that, because like, I have a lot of anger issues, like I have really bad ADHD, stuff like that. So it’s kind of hard for me to be nice, a lot of the time.”
The nature of the program allows FNS workers to meet youth outside of the service provider’s office and allows them to establish bonds beyond those of conventional support programs. The FNS worker was able to take a walk with the youth and use this time to establish a rapport and offer them an emotional outlet. What resulted was the youth expressing positive changes.
Here is a narrative from a youth who presented with a concern of securing adequate employment in their goal of preventing homelessness. When asked what was the greatest growth they experienced in the program, this was their response:
“He was like, I’ll keep my eye out, um it was more of like motivating me to go and he helped me with that stuff. He was like, you have to just have to remember like the money at the end of the week, because I’m with the temp agency right now. Um so it just remember the money at the end of the week, what it’s gonna look like, like, remember, when you were working at the restaurant, it was this much every two weeks. Now you’re gonna make that in one week.”
While the aim of the FNS approach is to help strengthen the adult relationships surrounding the youth, its flexible and dynamic framework allows workers to provide immediate support to the youth in a way that is suited for their specific situation. As highlighted in this quote, supporting youth to strive for improved financial opportunities is in line with the larger goal of youth homelessness prevention. The flexible nature of the FNS wraparound framework allowed the support worker to focus on providing emotional guidance towards this short-term goal. This same youth expressed their gratitude and described how impactful this program had been in their life.
Material Support
The FNS approach allows workers the flexibility to purchase items that the youth needs. As illustrated in the current literature, flexibility in support programs encompasses providing low-barrier access to necessary resources. Youth are in a transition period and may not always have the financial or material means to support themselves during this unstable time. Below are some youth narratives that specifically highlight the material support the FNS program was able to offer and its impact on their well-being.
The next youth we will hear from self-identifies as Indigenous. The literature emphasizes that when working with this demographic, it is important that support be culturally relevant. This youth expressed that connecting with their culture was important to them, and the FNS program provided them with the material support they needed to help with their cultural reclamation journey. When asked how the program helped strengthen the relationships in their life, this was their response:
“When I first connected with them, they’re really helpful with um uh getting me flights to um New Mexico with so I could go with um a few of my other friends for the Gathering of Nations, which is like um a really big cultural event for me.”
This Indigenous youth mentions how the FNS program was able to purchase travel, accommodation, and tickets so they could attend a social and cultural event. Research demonstrates that the “intergenerational trauma of colonization can result in poor social support as youth may experience increased difficulty in maintaining healthy, stable, and trusting relationships.” The FNS approach incorporates the flexibility to provide material support according to a youth’s individual needs. In this case, we see an improved perception of support for this Indigenous youth.
Similarly, another youth highlights similar material support offered by their FNS worker. More specifically, we can see how material support impacted the youth’s ability to mediate interpersonal conflict. When asked how the program helped strengthen their relationships with people in their lives, they responded as follows:
“I’m not necessarily comfortable with having people in my space. So um, like I said earlier, they um gave us a gift card to go to get like dish soap and stuff like that. And we kind of talked about um, if I wasn’t able to get it done by this day, then they can come help us out before my roommate got back, um because my roommate typically works um out of town. And I prefer that she comes home to a cleaner house, but we’re not always um, don’t always have it together then. And so just having that motivation, where they said that they would come in and help if we don’t have it done by this day really helped me prioritize it.”
Here, the worker was able to obtain household cleaning supplies and even helped the youth clean when necessary.
A common theme we found was that the support provided in other youth programs was often limited to what could be done in the service provider’s office. The dynamic nature of the FNS program resulted in helping mediate relationships beyond those with chosen natural supports, such as roommate conflict, which is not uncommon when learning to live with others in a shared space. This type of flexibility is in line with a youth-centred approach, which greatly improves outcomes during the transition to adulthood.
Conclusion
FNS is a dynamic prevention framework that caters to a youth’s specific needs. As demonstrated by the narratives above, the flexibility in the FNS program allowed FNS workers to tailor their support to the youth’s situation and needs. By offering flexible emotional and material support, youth were able to find increased stability.
Youth homelessness support interventions serve a non-homogenous group, with instability being a common theme. A wraparound approach is needed when working with such populations, and the FNS program exemplifies flexibility at its core, resulting in improved youth perceptions of support. Other programs may benefit by incorporating a similar flexible and holistic framework.
Want to learn more about FNS? Check out our collection of resources on the Homelessness Learning Hub!