Homeless Youth: Access to Healthcare Services
Homeless Youth

Homeless Youth: Increasing Access to Healthcare Services

Homeless Youth: Increasing Access to Healthcare Services

The estimated number people in homeless families in 2014 were 216,261, of which nearly 60% were under the age of 18 (Henry et al., 2014, p. 29). The number of unaccompanied homeless children and youth in 2014 was estimated to be just under 200,000 individuals (p. 39). The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines children as any individual under the age of 18, while youth are defined as being between 18- and 24-years of age. Unaccompanied children represent about 70% of this homeless demographic. Combining these numbers result in about 78,281 and 263,727 homeless youth and children, respectively, living on the streets and in shelters in the United States in 2014, which represent 13.5 and 45.6%, respectively, of all homeless individuals.

Other estimates suggest that the number of adolescents living….

Talents are noted as an individual's naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior that may be applied productively. The more dominant a theme in an individual, the more that particular theme will likely influence that person's behavior and performance (Strengthstest 2009).
Table I: Thirty-four Talent Themes (Strengthstest 2009).

Achiever®

People strong in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.

Activator®

People strong in the Activator theme can make things happen by turning thoughts into action. They are often impatient.

Adaptability®

People strong in the Adaptability theme prefer to "go with the flow." They tend to be "now" people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.

Analytical®

People strong in the Analytical theme search for reasons and causes. They have the ability to think about all the factors that might affect a situation.

ArrangerTM

People strong in the….

unaway and Homeless Youth Act of 2008-PL 110-378
The unaway and Homeless Act of 2008 built on legislation established in the 1970s that addressed youth issues in an attempt to keep youths from entering into the juvenile corrections system. Over the years, the Act has been reauthorized and expanded to support programs that aid homeless and runaway youths. Currently, reauthorization is awaiting approval in Congress. Leahy has added the rights of LGBT youths to the proposal, which has prompted epublicans to reject it. Thus, millions in funding is being withheld from programs that depend on federal dollars. This paper discusses the background of the Act and the proposal for reauthorization and why it should be given so that programs may continue and youths may be assisted.

Introduction

The econnecting Homeless Youth Act also known as the unaway and Homeless Youth Act of 2008-PL 110-378 is current legislation that was passed in 2008 at….

For some, there will be a denial and minimization of the substance habit as being inconsequential, purely recreational or extremely intermittent. This response is akin to the young adult asserting that there is no problem. For other homeless youths, their drug or alcohol habit maybe viewed as a form of survival: these drugs help these teenagers bear life on the street. In that sense the substance is attributed as beneficial for the escapism necessary to survival. "Using, even abusing substances is often viewed as a 'normal' practice by those identifying with street culture. Homeless young people report using drugs and alcohol as a coping strategy and often have more favorable attitudes toward drug use than their non-homeless peers" (Gomez et al., 2010). Thus, there could be a complete difficulty in making any assessments, since many homeless youths won't see their substance abuse as a problem at all, and won't….

Strength Based Assessment -- LGBT Homeless Youth
The objective of this study is to describe the process that would be used for completing a strengths-based assessment for LGBT homeless youth.

In order to make a strengths-based assessment for LGBT homeless youth, the social worker or advocate must first examine what is available to assist LGBT homeless youth in the way of services and assistive information that will serve to empower LGBT homeless youth to overcome their present situation.

Services that homeless LBGT youth are in need of include medical and health care services, access to housing, nutrition, counseling where needed as well as access to educational institutions including higher education at colleges and universities. The social worker is in a unique position to assist these youth in gaining access to these resources. Social workers work from a viewpoint of the principles of human rights which are formulated upon the basis of the worth….

Social wok is a demanding yet ewading field. Though vaious initiatives, social wokes can have a pofound impact on the wold in which they live. This is paticulaly tue fo homelessness as it elates to the LGBT Youth. Homelessness unfotunately continues to be a costly epidemic plaguing society. The costs of homelessness fa outweigh the taditional aspects of lowe tax evenue and poductivity. The costs of inceased cime lack of skills taining, and lack of pofessional gowth ae all vey eal costs to society. Fotunately, eseach dedicated towads the impovements of homelessness thoughout Ameica is vey obust. Vaious activities such as counseling, job taining, and othe foms of intevention have had a pofound impact on homelessness in Ameica. This document will fist discuss effective pevention and intevention measues of homelessness within the LGBT community. Paticula emphasis will be placed on pee eviewed aticles and academic eseach to suppot all of….

Health isks Across the Life Span: Impact of Nursing Intervention on Decreasing Substances Among Homeless Youth
Statistical data shows that an estimated 1.2 million people from ages 11 to 19 live without any shelter. Usage of alcohol (mainly binge drinking and methamphetamine) is very common among these homeless adolescents, they are observed to consume these substances more frequently and in greater amounts as compared to the youth that is not homeless. The main reasons behind high consumption of addictive substances by homeless youth is social (peer)pressure that prevails in the lower strata of United States' population. In order to reduce the consumption of alcohol and other drugs among the poor population, Health Promotion Program was started by nurses and in the article to follow; we'll view the impacts of this campaign in detail.

The main outcomes of substance abuse among the homeless teenagers results in:

Lower rates of condom use

High risk of….

With the increase in families, and thus children and teens on the street, there has been a subsequent increase in youth drug use, pregnancy and crime, especially violent and sexual crimes. This disturbing trend has created a new challenge to how to deal with the homeless epidemic as new resources are needed. Further, many of the traditional charitable organizations are unequipped to deal with this new need, meaning that few services are now available to the homeless.

In conclusion, if anything is clear, it is that the homeless problem is becoming worse instead of better. Instead of homeless individuals, there are now homeless families. With this, the cycle of homelessness continues, giving society few, if any, options on stopping the vicious and continuing downward spiral of poverty, homelessness, and the multitude of problems associated with it.

ibliography

Aday, Lu Ann. (1994): "Health Status of Vulnerable Populations." Annual Review of PUblic Health. 15:487-509.

DePastino, Todd.….

This was equivalent to those youth utilizing ongoing, long-term services (Pollio, Thompson, Tobias, eid and Spitznagel, 2006).
Critique

There are several significant limitations that must be considered when looking at the results of this study. First, there was lack of a control group which limits the conclusions that can be drawn concerning causal assertions about the effectiveness of services. It is thought that future research on service use for this population needs to include a comparison condition of other troubled youth, perhaps runaway/homeless youth not seeking crisis services. Features of the sampling strategy limited the generalization of the findings. Since the sample included only service-using youth, it is not generalizable to the entire runaway/homeless population. The authors believed that the youth in this sample were representative of the population of service-using runaway/homeless youth from Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, and Kansas. However, other research has suggested that this population is not representative of….

Housing and Homelessness in Canada
In Canada, there is a problem with homelessness. While that is certainly not unique to the country, it is a significant issue which has to be addressed in order to facilitate changes that can lower the number of homeless people in the country. The majority of these people live in the larger cities and do have some access to resources, but the problems with homelessness have still kept growing in complexity and size over recent years. The demographics of the people who are most often seen as homeless are changing, as well, putting younger and more vulnerable people on the streets. There are estimates that 0.5% of the population does not have a home at all, and some believe that those estimates only represent about 1/2 of the actual population of homeless people throughout Canada (Fortin, 2008). Part of the problem with not being certain how….

Family homelessness has emerged as a serious global problem and over the last twenty-five years the make-up of the homeless population has changed significantly in the United States (Swick Pp). The majority of the homeless were men in the early 1980's, however, today, families make up thirty percent of the homeless population, and some scholars suggest that families may constitute up to forty to fifty percent of the homeless (Swick Pp).
The United States federal government defines homeless individuals as those lacking a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence, or those who have a primary nighttime residence that is:

*a supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations

(including welfare hotels, congregate shelters, and transitional housing for the mentally ill);

*an institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized; or *a public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation….

("Qualitative research...," 2008, Sampling Issues section)
Groenwald (2004) also stresses that in regard to the phenomenon the researcher identifies/describes, the unique or minority voices serve as vital counterpoints to relate.

Data Collection Method

To complement the proposed study's literature review, the researcher plans to interview a minimum of 10 professional individuals who regularly work with underinsured and/or uninsured youth. The researcher notes three types of interviews" a) the unstructured interview, which constitutes a formal, conversational interview without any predetermined questions; (b) the structured interview, where the interviewer utilizes a series of pre-established questions in the same order to obtain information from those he/she interviews; - the semi-structured interview, where the interviewer asks numerous open-ended questions that simultaneously mirror the researcher's perception of theoretical perspective.

CONCLUSION

egarding the phenomenon being researched, as Groenwald (2004) stresses, the unique or minority voices prove to be vital counterpoints for the researcher to bring out. During the course of….

EACTION PAPE eaction PaperPart 1The research article selected for this paper was titled, Acceptability of a Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention for HIV Prevention among Youth Experiencing Homelessness: A Qualitative Analysis. In this particular article, Acorda, Jones, and Maria (2021) seek to assess both the impact and acceptableness of interventions that embrace technology in efforts to attenuate or reduce the risks of contracting HIV among youths experiencing homelessness (YEH). More specifically, the authors seek to evaluate the acceptability and impacts of an app-based just-in-time adaptive intervention for HIV prevention from the YEH perspective.The model used in the development of the intervention was the Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills (IMB) approach. The model has been used in diverse contexts in efforts to highlight or pinpoint behavioral change determinants. According to the authors of the present study, the model posits that individuals need relevant health information, motivation, and behavioral skills in order to initiate and maintain health….

Often children must withhold information from people who could help them as public awareness of their homelessness would likely end in separation from loved ones as for children a greater number of programs exist to help them independently than collectively with their parents. Homeless youth are also a significant social issue and their numbers are hard to even estimate, though there are clear indications that the numbers are growing. "Novac, Serge, Eberle, and Brown (2002) identified four important trends among homeless youth: 1) the incidence is increasing; 2) an increasing number are chronically homeless; 3) the age at which youth become homeless is decreasing, especially for females; and 4) more identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered." (Wingert, Higgitt & istock, 2005, p. 54) the issue, like with that of other homeless populations is developing systems that build transitions to more stable and permanent housing. (Wingert, Higgitt & istock,….

165).
Conclusion:

The number of homeless students in America is staggering, and sadly growing. These children are faced with unique challenges that their peers with homes are not typically plagued with. Homeless students academic efforts are often decimated due to fatigue and poor nutrition. Anxiety and depression affects their ability to concentrate. And, they often have gaps in their knowledge due to the inability to complete their homework as a result of not having the necessary supplies on hand (Noll & Watkins, 2004). Emotional, behavioral, academic, social, and familial problems occur more frequently in this category of students. For this reason, educators and school counselors should be positioned to provide the services and support these children will probably not receive elsewhere.

As Swick (2004) notes,

Educators can positively affect the lives of children and families who are homeless or in other high-risk situations. By understanding the dynamics of what homeless families experience, we….