A Historical Look at the Role of Social Work in Ending Youth Homelessness: Moving Forward

This banded dissertation is composed of three products that identify common experiences of and contributing factors to youth homelessness in the Progressive and McKinney-Vento Eras. The first product is a conceptual paper that uses a historical lens to examine the administration of services for homeless youth during the two eras. Focusing on best practices implemented during these periods and their merits and shortcomings, this dissertation approached the eras using a Social-Ecological model, which helped to inform the proposed Nested Model for Ending Youth Homelessness. The second product is a Narrative Review using a qualitative (content analysis) approach to analyze research and literature pertaining to social workers and the grand challenge of ending youth homelessness. Four themes emerged from the inquiry: services related to meeting the needs of homeless youth, relationships between homeless youth and the community at large, policy in support of ensuring rights and guiding program development for homeless youth requiring data collection, and promising practices that are evidenced based and include the voice of homeless youth. The themes contribute to knowledge that may be central to the social work profession and research that provides a framework for understanding what may be essential to ending youth homelessness. The third product is a summary of an oral presentation entitled “Historical Lessons Learned with Homeless Youth: Moving Forward,” given on October 27th at the 30th Annual National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth Conference in Anaheim, California. This presentation provided historical context for issues related to homeless youth while discussing the implementation of promising practices in the McKinney-Vento Era