The growing number of people living below the poverty line has made homelessness a topic of interest, once again. This paper focuses on the homeless adolescent population that is often overlooked, and explores the complexity of the homeless situation, and how there is no definite solution to overcome homelessness. At-risk and homeless adolescents are affected by many negative factors that cause them to seek early independence, such as parenting style, finical instability, lack of an education, drugs and alcohol, physical and sexual abuse, all of which are discussed in this paper. Along with the negative factors, there are protective barriers that can potentially help an at-risk adolescent but are ineffective once the adolescent is homeless. This paper also addresses how we as a society can be more proactive in helping this population, and be aware if the warning signs that can lead a youth to decide to run away and eventually end up homeless.

The federal government enacted the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (MVA) to equip schools with services to help alleviate the many barriers students experiencing homelessness face in pursuit of educational opportunities. Educational agencies use federally mandated liaisons to uphold the provisions of the MVA. Despite the homeless liaisons' importance in facilitating the policy, few studies have examined how liaisons perceive their service area's response to homelessness. This study explored homeless liaisons' perceptions of MVA implementation in their service areas. Researchers invited every homeless liaison in three southern states to complete an online survey focusing on perceptions of MVA implementation and their service area's response to homelessness. Of the 369 practitioners identified as a homeless liaison solicited for study participation, 32 percent completed surveys. Results indicated significant differences in perceived implementation in the level of collaboration with teachers and school administrators, liaisons' job titles, school's receipt of federal Education for Homeless Children and Youth funding, and awareness of homelessness in terms of general awareness, interaction, policy, and needs. Findings indicate that collaboration and awareness are major factors that affect perceptions of implementation. Furthermore, the results indicate that liaisons must take steps to ensure a collaborative environment to implement the MVA.

The numbers of homeless adolescent mothers have been increasing over the past decade. Previous studies have focused on homeless individuals, but no studies examined late adolescent mothers' homelessness and pregnancy experiences while living in transitional housing. Using a phenomenological methodology, this study explored the lived experiences of 7 adolescent mothers, 18 to 24 years old, who were homeless, pregnant, and living in transitional housing. The social construction of reality theory provided the framework and interpretive lens for this study. Social networking and snowball sampling were used for participant recruitment. Through in-depth interviews, data coding and analyses were conducted to identify 6 major themes: (a) unknown risk and coping, (b) improved outcomes, (c) hopes, dreams, and goals, (d) rules, rules, and more rules, (e) strain, mental illness, and abuse, and (f) good and bad family relationships. Two primary public policy and social change themes were examined in depth: (a) improved outcomes and (b) hopes, dreams, and goals. These 2 key themes illustrated the importance of implementing sustainable social service public policy and the influence of transitional housing access on the lived experiences of adolescent mothers' homelessness and pregnancy. Southeastern Florida policymakers, in conjunction with public and private sector collaboration, can facilitate positive social change by creating and funding proactive and preventive initiatives to help reduce adolescent pregnancy, reduce homeless, and provide sustainable, skill-building transitional living centers.

<p>Homeless adolescents are in Sweden rather invisible, as a group. There is no established definition or description of the problem, nor any uniform terms regarding it. The purpose of this study is to investigate how four different organizations, based on their basic principles, describe the group homeless adolescents. We discuss why the organizations reason as they do, and what it leads to. In order to do so we have performed qualitative interviews with representatives from each organization. The study relies on a social constructivist theory, which focuses on how knowledge and different phenomena are constructed. To analyze the constructions concerning the group homeless adolescents we used Kitsuse & Spector’s (1973a; 1973b; 1977) social constructivist theory about social problems. To operationalize our theory and determine how the phenomena is constructed we used Rose’s (1999) dimensions of analysis. Our results show that governmental organizations don’t recognize this as a problem of homelessness, but as a family problem. Only one organization offers a different description. This indicates that there is a public description of the problem, and one claims-making process. According to the public description the solution to the problem is family treatment which means that the basic condition is that the adolescents return home, otherwise the group can’t be helped.</p>

Homeless adolescents are in Sweden rather invisible, as a group. There is no established definition or description of the problem, nor any uniform terms regarding it. The purpose of this study is to investigate how four different organizations, based on their basic principles, describe the group homeless adolescents. We discuss why the organizations reason as they do, and what it leads to. In order to do so we have performed qualitative interviews with representatives from each organization. The study relies on a social constructivist theory, which focuses on how knowledge and different phenomena are constructed. To analyze the constructions concerning the group homeless adolescents we used Kitsuse &amp; Spector’s (1973a; 1973b; 1977) social constructivist theory about social problems. To operationalize our theory and determine how the phenomena is constructed we used Rose’s (1999) dimensions of analysis. Our results show that governmental organizations don’t recognize this as a problem of homelessness, but as a family problem. Only one organization offers a different description. This indicates that there is a public description of the problem, and one claims-making process. According to the public description the solution to the problem is family treatment which means that the basic condition is that the adolescents return home, otherwise the group can’t be helped.