This report was published by Covenant House Toronto and Making The Shift.

HERE’S HOW THE AUTHORS DESCRIBE THIS REPORT:

This research sought to understand how living in Toronto’s emergency shelter system during the pandemic has impacted youth experiencing homelessness, as well as investigate how the sector and municipality could reimagine its response to youth homelessness and begin to shift its response toward longer-term solutions.

There were three original objectives to this research:

• To understand the impact of the pandemic on youth experiencing homelessness in Toronto in terms of their overall health, wellbeing and their perception of available service.
• To identify how the youth homelessness sector collaborated to address the crisis, and identify recommendations to strengthen this collaboration in the future, both as a response to future pandemics and to youth homelessness in general.
• To identify key recommendations to prevent the experience of homelessness for youth and/or to facilitate sustained exits from homelessness in anticipation of future pandemics as well as a general strategy to address youth homelessness.

Early in the data collection process, however, it became clear that the pandemic was also having a tremendous impact on the staff that work with youth experiencing homelessness, and hence a fourth objective was added:

• To understand the impact of the pandemic on staff who serve youth experiencing homelessness in Toronto, in terms of their experiences of burnout, wellbeing, and workplace supports.