Reconnect

Reconnect (formerly known as Youth Reconnect) is a community-based early intervention program that is designed to help young people (ages 13–24) who are at risk of or in the early stages of homelessness. The goal of Reconnect is to help young people stay connected to their family, community, and school, and to strengthen connections to natural supports in order to prevent or reduce the risk of homelessness. It builds on the practices of Family and Natural Supports and is guided by the principles of Housing First for Youth but focuses upstream on providing school-based supports that keep young people in place, so that they can move forward with their life in a safe and planned way.

Young people who are at risk of homelessness often exhibit early warning signs. From a lack of engagement at school to poor hygiene to missing soccer practices regularly—these signs can indicate that a young person needs help. Failing to intervene early has consequences, including disconnection from the community, school, and networks of support, which can ultimately lead to homelessness.

Educators are often the first adults to spot some of the early warning signs that a young person may be at risk of homelessness. By nurturing close partnerships between Reconnect programs and schools, there is a real opportunity for young people to find out where to access help and for teachers to be able to make connections and direct young people to supports in their community. Educators and Reconnect staff can work together to address the needs of young people and achieve the mutual goals of individual and family well-being, at the same time as promoting school engagement and student success.

Reconnect engages young people in their community, well before they need to access shelter or emergency services. In practice, this often means that Reconnect workers go the extra mile to meet young people in community centres, coffee shops, or wherever is most comfortable. This work tends to occur outside of normal work hours to accommodate the schedule of young people and their families.

Once a referral is made, a Reconnect worker conducts an in-person assessment, which typically includes setting actionable goals and identifying specific needs (e.g., finding a job, helping repair a relationship at home, or improving school attendance). This work is carried out with ongoing consent from the young person.

The case management services are youth-centred and designed to address personal and family challenges, while building on their strengths, talents, assets to help them achieve their goals and enhance well-being. In practice, these supports can include things such as information, guidance, family mediation and support, systems navigation, access to mental health services (preferably on-site), and referrals.

Program Elements and Objectives

The ultimate goal of Reconnect is to prevent a young person from experiencing homelessness. This can be achieved by helping young people who are at risk of homelessness to:

1. stay in place in their communities
2. stabilize and improve their housing situation
3. strengthen family relationships where practicable
4. improve their level of engagement with education, training, employment, and the community.

1) Keep Young People in Place

Youth Reconnect is a “place-based” intervention that is designed to enhance young peoples’ assets, self-sufficiency, and connections to meaningful adults, so that they remain attached to the community and school. It is designed so that young people can access services where they are, instead of having to access supports in another community.

2) Stabilize Living Situation

A key objective of Reconnect is to help stabilize a young person’s living situation, either by addressing issues at home that are producing the risk of homelessness, such as family conflict, or by helping young people who can no longer stay at home find housing and support options in their community. These efforts are intended to keep young people connected to school, friends, and meaningful adults in their lives—all of which are vital for positive youth development.

Stabilizing a young person’s living situation may involve:

• Ensuring access to safe, secure, and stable housing.
• Addressing family conflict.
• Providing the young person with emotional, physical, and income support.
• Offering mental health supports
• Addressing challenges and stresses a family may be facing.
• Ensuring young people feel supported and are self-sufficient.
• Enhancing connections with cultural supports and community.

3) Support Young People and their Families

Young people enter into homelessness largely as a result of the challenges they experience with their parents, caregivers, or families. In spite of this, Reconnect operates with the underlying ethos that family (however defined by the young person) is important. A truly effective response must consider opportunities to reconcile relationships that have become strained over time from past or current conflicts. Young people should lead this process, choosing with whom and when to reconcile. For that reason, Reconnect is a youth-focused intervention that serves the whole family, meaning that family members and natural supports are also considered program participants.

4) Enhance School Engagement

Enhancing school engagement and supporting student success are key goals of Reconnect. Research demonstrates that young people who do not graduate from high school report lower rates of labour force participation, poorer health outcomes, and increased activity with the justice system. This suggests that keeping young people connected to schools can have a profound impact on a young person’s well-being, family relations, and their risk of homelessness.

Considerations for Implementation

Rights-Based Approach

A human rights approach embraces the idea that all young people have a fundamental, legal right to be free of homelessness and to have access to adequate housing. Practically, this means that policies, laws, and strategies aimed at youth homelessness prevention must be grounded in human rights at all stages of development, implementation, and evaluation. As a human rights violation, youth homelessness must be remedied, and this rights-based approach can be applied through Reconnect.

Youth-Centred Services With Individualized Supports

Reconnect provides services that are driven by the needs of the young person and their families. Aspects of youth-centred services include:

• Establishing trust and treating young people with respect and dignity.
• Supporting young people to identify and set goals and helping them follow through.
• Referring the young person to services of their choice and accompanying them to appointments.
• Assisting young people to develop creative solutions to their problems.
• Advocating and modelling self-advocacy for young people in a service system environment.
• Promoting ethical behaviour and anti-discriminatory practice that treats participants, family, and staff with dignity and respect

Positive Youth Development

Positive youth development (PYD) “is an approach to working with youth that emphasizes building on youths’ strengths and providing supports and opportunities that will help them achieve goals and transition to adulthood in a productive, healthy manner.” PYD is an approach to engaging young people within their communities that is productive and constructive in focus and fosters the development of positive relationships, better outcomes, and opportunities to achieve goals. As a strengths-based approach, PYD focuses not just on risk and vulnerability, but also a youth’s assets.

Timely and Flexible Supports

It is advised that service providers follow up within 24–48 hours from the time a referral is made. Research shows that a response within 24 hours can prevent youths from leaving home. Once a connection is made, the young person is then met by a Reconnect worker at a time and place of the youth’s choosing. Together they assess the issues, needs, and strengths of the young person in order to identify goals and help develop a youth-led plan. As a youth-centred intervention, the services the young person receives will differ depending on individual circumstances and needs.

Cultural and Contextual Competency

The design and development of a Reconnect program should reflect the identities and experiences of the youth and families in the surrounding community in order to be accessible, inclusive, and competent in the supports that are being delivered. The intersecting identities and diversity among groups, such as newcomer youth, Black youth, 2SLGBTQ, young parents, youth with disabilities, and youth in rural or remote communities, result in unique experiences and needs that should inform the operations of a Reconnect program.

NYA:WHE - An Indigenous-led adaptation of Reconnect

The Reconnect model has also been adopted into an Indigenous-led approach called NYA:WHE, which is operated by Niwasa Kendaaswin Teg, an Indigenous multi-service organization in Hamilton, Ontario. The NYA:WEH program is a ‘stay in school’ initiative designed to assist and support First Nation, Métis, and Inuit students in elementary and secondary school, by addressing the factors that can lead to school disengagement and potentially homelessness.

Indigenous youth advisors work with the students, their families and the school community to provide safe spaces and wholistic programming within an inclusive Indigenous educational framework. The program supports transition to secondary school and explores pathways to post-secondary education through academic, cultural, social and emotional support.

Adapted from the Youth Reconnect Guide. For more information about Reconnect, see our free training on the Homelessness Learning Hub.