Homeless Youth and the Search for Stability

by Jeff Karabanow, Sean Kidd, Tyler Frederick, Jean M. Hughes

Overview

Youth are one of the fastest growing segments of the homeless population. Although there has been much research on how youth become homeless and survive on the streets, we know very little about their pathways off the street and the many challenges that present during this process.

This book relates the lived experiences of homeless youth as they negotiate the individual, sociocultural, and economic tensions of transitioning out of homeless and street contexts and cultures. Through interviews the authors gained privileged entry into the lives of youth in Toronto and Halifax over a year-long period.

Through rich qualitative prose, quantitative elaboration, and comic-book narratives, participants spoke of courage, fortitude, strength, adversity, and at times, simple bad luck. Ultimately this became a story of fragility, complexity, living “on the edge,” and the (re)-building of identity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771123334
Publisher:	Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Publication date:	05/31/2018
Pages:	296
Sales rank:	1,142,933
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Jeff Karabanow is a professor of social work at Dalhousie University and has worked with homeless youth in Toronto, Montreal and Guatemala. He is the author of Being Young and Homeless (2004) and co-author of Leaving the Streets (2010). Dr. Karabanow co-coordinates Halifax's Out of The Cold Emergency Shelter and is the co-director of the Dalhousie School of Social Work Community Clinic.

Sean Kidd is a clinical psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and an associate professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. The focus of his career has been marginality and service enhancement for the often overlapping populations of homeless youth and individuals with severe mental illness.

Tyler Frederick is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Science and Humanities at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology. His research focuses on how homeless and street-involved young people navigate homelessness, with a particular focus on relationships and issues of identity.

Jean Hughes' research and publications concentrate on marginalized populations of children and youth with a focus on mental health issues. Her research is interdisciplinary, community-based, and participatory in nature. It includes expertise from a range of disciplines and sectors, and integrates diverse research designs to enable a holistic exploration of phenomena.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1 Introduction

2 Street Exiting Framework

3 Working Toward Stability

4 The Wickedness of Youth Homelessness: Our Knowledge Mobilization Process

5 A Long Way to Go

6 Ethical Dilemmas in the Field. Reflections on Doing Research

7 Conclusion

Editorial Reviews

Experts and professionals in fields of social work, clinical psychology, and nursing present Homeless Youth and the Search for Stability, an in-depth study of why youth are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, and the challenges they face in the difficult pathway off the streets. Interviews with struggling youth in Toronto and Halifax over a year-long period form an invaluable bedrock of this studious yet compassionate study, ultimately created to aid the search for long-term solutions by better understanding the problems. Homeless Youth and the Search for Stability is highly recommended especially for public and college libary social issues collections.

Midwest Book Review