Report

Guiding Youth Home: A Design-Based Approach to Preventing and Ending Youth Homelessness

This document is part policy provocation and part inspiration. It’s intended for anyone who is interested in learning more about Duty to Assist—an innovative, rights-based approach to homelessness prevention pioneered in Wales—and wants to learn how to use design to improve the policy development process.

Part one of the document provides an overview of Duty to Assist and lessons learned from the Housing (Wales) Act 2014, along with key policy features that need to be considered when designing future services. Part two describes PluggedIn, our vision of a school-based service derived from Duty to Assist, and highlights four moments when policy and practice intersect in unintended ways. We recommend addressing these four moments to advance and shape the philosophy, policy, and practice of Duty to Assist.