Youth Emergency Shelter Service

Home Engagement Opportunities Youth Emergency Shelter Service

Overview

Dates: July 5, 2023 to September 6, 2024

Who: Ministry of Children and Family Development

What: Developing a service for vulnerable youth that can fit within the ministry’s network of care

Where: Province-wide

Why: To address the needs of vulnerable youth while also ensuring the ministry and its partners fulfil statutory obligations regarding safety and protection

How: Online feedback form, written responses, virtual workshops/focus groups

Category: Families and Residents

A new service for vulnerable youth

Some youth require a voluntary service that meets their immediate needs for shelter, crisis intervention, and safety while working to access additional supports when they are ready.

The ministry is developing Youth Emergency Shelter (YES) services to address this gap for vulnerable youth. These services are intended for youth who are:

Between ages 15-18, regardless of their legal status (in-care, not in care, out-of-care arrangement)
Experiencing housing instability or homelessness, or living in an unsafe environment (e.g., sexual exploitation, criminal activity, problematic substance use)

YES service provides short-term protective accommodation and supports to youth on an emergency crisis-intervention basis. In addition to overnight accommodation, the service includes outreach and drop-in day programming to youth in the community. Youth do not need to access the overnight service to engage in the outreach and day programming services. Youth engaging in the services will benefit from an environment that is low-barrier, trauma-informed, supportive of immediate basic needs, and focused on safety, harm reduction, and crisis intervention.

The service is comprised of three components:

Outreach service: YES outreach workers provide a mobile service by meeting youth in the community individually. They support them to build relationships and trust. Outreach services are also intended to act as a pathway to connect youth with services offered by community partners and the ministry, and provide an important opportunity to support youth that might not otherwise access these services.
Drop-in day programming service: provides a safe and accessible environment at the service for youth to visit and participate in voluntary programming. This programming offers a supervised area for youth to connect, including through activities, workshops, and one-on-one support for youth arranged by the service provider.
Overnight service: provides culturally safe, short-term, protective accommodation to youth on an emergency basis and for youth with no other safe living arrangement is readily available. This low-barrier service allows youth to meet their immediate needs for shelter, crisis intervention, and safety while working with the youth and family on stabilization.

Youth Emergency Shelter Pilots

Two YES Services pilot projects are being conducted in Maple Ridge and the Cowichan Valley. Key learnings and feedback from the pilots will be incorporated into the ongoing service design.

The design for this service includes examining key policy questions, engaging with partners, refining the model based on learnings from the pilots and engagements, and further design. Following the engagement and design phase, the ministry will finalize the service and decide if and how the service should be implemented.

Engagement summary

Public engagement is foundational to developing a model that meets the needs of vulnerable youth in B.C. Through this engagement, the ministry sought to learn from a range of different partners and people, including:

Youth and young adults with living/lived experience, and their families
Service providers, including those currently delivering youth emergency shelter care models
Community-based partners, including community outreach and community drop-in programs
Indigenous partners
Community members
Equity seeking groups, including 2SLGBTQIA+

The key focus areas of the engagements are:

The current use and function of services for vulnerable youth in B.C.
The needs of children and youth regarding short-term, low-barrier, and emergency accommodation
How the services can be best designed to effectively meet the needs of youth
How the services can best incorporate cultural safety and meet the needs of Indigenous Youth, including innovative practices that support cultural, physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing
How the services fit within the broader supports and services available to youth.

In addition to this public engagement through govTogetherBC, the ministry is actively engaging with partners through targeted workshops, focus groups, and interviews to gather feedback on the service design. The ministry intends to engage with Indigenous partners through a separate distinctions-based approach for implementation in Indigenous Children and Family Service Agencies.

How your contribution makes a difference

These services will be an integral support for youth who are experiencing homelessness, housing instability, or who are otherwise living in an unsafe arrangement. By participating in this engagement, your feedback will help inform the design of these services so that it can make a difference for some of the province’s most vulnerable youth.