Federal Resources

Having a GED instead of a high school diploma, difficulty getting parental permission, lack of a GPA, and incomplete transcripts can all be obstacles that homeless students can face when seeking scholarship funding. In this blog post, Cyekeia Lee, director of higher education initiatives at the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, shares strategies for youth-serving professionals who are helping students navigate the scholarship application process. 

This article highlighs a series of tip sheets, developed by the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, which is divided into five sections which each address a different aspect of attempting to help keep homeless youth in school, including information on McKinney-Vento Act’s Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program, easing homeless youths’ paths to college, and helping homeless youth access basic services

This website developed by FYSB illustrates how the programs operated through the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act help to meet the needs of homeless youth and young adults and contribute to the goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020. It also provides information on the issue of youth homelessness and ways users can contribute to the efforts to end homelessness among youth. 

In this article, Graham Bowman, an Equal Justice Works fellow at The Law Project of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, offers advice on encouraging and helping runaway and homeless youth to apply for Medicaid. 

This article features a Q&A with professor and researcher Natasha Slesnick about the work she and her colleagues are doing to understand what evidence-based treatments might be effective in working with homeless youth.  

FYSB supports the organizations and communities that work every day to reduce the risk of youth homelessness, adolescent pregnancy and domestic violence. Learn more about FYSB programs.

Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) provides news and resources related to issues such as homelessness, adolescent pregnancy, and domestic violence. Watch FYSB's new video “The Family and Youth Services Bureau — Join Us” to learn more about FYSB work and programs.

This blog post from the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth links to multiple resources that can help youth-serving programs understand how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects youth, including homeless and runaway youth. The post also provides some of the highlights from a recent webinar that discussed what youth and youth workers need to know about the ACA. 

The National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth (NCFY) published this short list of hotline numbers that every youth should have, especially youth dealing with homelessness.

This Information Memorandum provides guidance on services for youth under age 18 who run away from foster care and come in contact with runaway and homeless youth programs. 

Four youth workers share what they plan to do in their communities over the next five years in order to meet the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness’s goal of ending youth homelessness by 2020.

After the death of his mother when he was a teenager, Syncere started living on the streets. He then got involved with the Night Ministry, a Chicago youth program, went back to school, and now works for the organization. In this podcast from the FYSB event "Ending Youth Homelessness: A Call to Action,” Syncere shares his experiences and discusses his dream to open a 24-hour youth resource center. 

In this podcast, a street outreach worker in Washington, DC, discusses his experience joining 350 volunteers for the city’s annual count of people experiencing homelessness. He shares what outreach professionals who work with young people bring to this important event. 

As part of FYSB's event "Ending Youth Homelessness: A Call to Action" in October 2014, multiple young people shared their personal stories and recommendations for serving youth more effectively. One of the speakers, Anthony Ross, who witnessed violence in his home as a child and ended up homeless as a teenager, shared his story of perseverance. 

This resource from the National Runaway Safeline provides ideas and resources for individuals, organizations, and communities that are planning activities related to National Runaway Prevention Month. 

This podcast from the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth features Gina, a youth advocate for runaway and homeless youth issues, who has attended many statewide and national conferences. Gina shares her thoughts on what makes a successful youth advocate and how adults can support young people in becoming advocates.

This article provides information about a research review that aimed to determine directions for research, public policy, and practice related to serving homeless youth who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning. The article also includes potential implications of the research for policies and practices of youth-serving organizations. Researchers at Harvard Medical School conducted the research review. 

In this interview with NCFY, Robin Petering a researcher at the University of Southern California School of Social work discusses the reasons some homeless youth become involved in gangs, addressing young people’s involvement in gangs, and the high rates of trauma among juggalos, tattooed and street-named young fans of the band, Insane Clown Posse. 

This report, developed by the Department of Health and Human Services, Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB), summarizes FYSB efforts to combat youth homelessness, as well as data about the young people served by the agency’s programs and the services they received.

This article from the National Clearinghouse on Families & Youth highlights three studies that identify possible risk factors for criminal justice involvement among runaway and homeless youth, including substance use, length of time living on the streets, and childhood trauma history. 

This report to Congress documents the activities and accomplishments for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 of three programs authorized by the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act. The three programs are the Basic Center, Transitional Living, and Street Outreach. The report also describes the related network of support — including the National Communications System; the monitoring system; and other coordinating, training, and research activities. 

In November, NCFY asked readers to use their blogs to spread awareness of youth homelessness. Read some of the highlights from these posts on topics like adapting programs, meeting the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth, and educating community decision-makers. 

This article highlights a recent longitudinal study, conducted by researchers at The Ohio State University and featured in the Journal of Adolescence, that examined what factors might predict which youth who abuse substances may run away more than once. The youth surveyed who said they ran away or were homeless at least once more since returning home from the shelter (64%) reported more frequent substance use and a weaker sense of family cohesion than did youth who did not leave home again.

This podcast from the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth features Forrest Vest, a formerly homeless youth, discussing how he is working with a family friend to start a new foundation and how youth can be powerful advocates for change.

This article describes the Transition Age Youth triage tool, a new questionnaire to determine which youth are most at risk of long-term homelessness without intervention. The tool uses a welcoming, conversational tone to assess for six experiences that are strongly linked to long-term homelessness. The tool can be used in tandem with case management meetings and assessments to develop a service plan, as well as supportive housing.