Youth Counts are relatively new in Canada. Nonetheless, communities that have conducted youth counts, or youth-focused PiT Counts, have found initial success in engaging schools in the effort. School engagement may offer a partial solution to the difficultly of counting youth who services and cannot be found through the unsheltered count.
The Youth Count methodology is designed to reach youth who may otherwise be missed through a traditional PiT Count methodology. Magnet events, service counts and meaningful youth consultation improve the likelihood that youth experiencing homelessness will be counted and surveyed. However, no count is perfect. It is inevitable that the Youth Count will miss eligible youth, particularly those who are couch surfing and/or disconnected from services.
School engagement, in the context of the Youth Count, is worth exploring further. Unquestionably, schools and school boards across the country have valuable information and insight to share. Above all, they have a captive audience – youth available to participate in the Youth Count Survey.
However, there are challenges to collecting data in and from schools. Provincial regulations, school board policies and sometimes, an unwillingness to acknowledge youth homelessness as an issue, can create barriers to engagement.
There are a number of ways to leverage school expertise in the Youth Count, each varying in complexity. All Youth Counts should strive to involve schools in the first count, even in a limited way. Early, positive engagement will set the foundation for further involvement in future years.
For more information on school engagement, refer to the Youth Count! Process Study.
TABLE 6. SCHOOL ENGAGEMENT
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Youth Count Leadership |
Ensure that your local school system is represented on your Youth Count Committee. Wherever possible, engage school boards in your area. If there is sufficient interest, consider creating a subcommittee or focus group with teachers and guidance counsellors. They can share useful information about where to locate youth and how best to survey them. |
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Volunteer Recruitment |
Ask your local school board to circulate your call for volunteers. Teachers and other school staff will bring helpful expertise and knowledge as survey volunteers. |
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Count Promotion |
Work with schools to promote the count, especially magnet events. Note: some schools may be unwilling to promote an outside event. Begin discussions early in the planning process. |
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School Administrative Data |
Schools may have a record of the number of youth that are without a fixed address, even an informal list or count. This information can be used to supplement the Youth Count data that is collected. Keep in mind, if schools are unable to provide you with anonymised, individual level data, you will be unable aggregate the Youth Count data collected elsewhere (magnet events, shelter count, street count) with the school-level data. Nonetheless, this information provides useful context for the Youth Count report. |
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Partial Survey |
Some school boards conduct annual surveys with their students. These surveys cover a range of topics including family circumstance, health, school experience, bullying and more. In some instances, it may be possible to “piggyback” on an existing survey. That is, to add questions pertaining to housing stability and experiences of homelessness. This data would indicate the rate of homelessness among school-involved youth. If conducted at the same time as the Youth Count, admittedly a significant undertaking, the results could be aggregated with other Youth Count data, provided there was a mechanism to deduplicate the data. |
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Full Youth Count Survey |
Conducting the full Youth Count survey with school-involved youth yields the highest quality data. However, to-do so can be logistically challenging. In many cases, students require parental consent to participate in outside research. Further, youth who participate in the full survey would be outing themselves, perhaps unwillingly, as homeless. While there are a number of considerations, this level of coordination and school engagement would yield comprehensive Youth Count data. |