Walla Walla’s Data Journey

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Quality, real-time data is the cornerstone of the Anchor Community Initiative. Our Data & Evaluation Manager, Vishesh Jain, shares how Walla Walla achieved this milestone.

In February, Walla Walla became the first Anchor Community to complete the Youth and Young Adult By-Name List Scorecard. This meant that Walla Walla could definitively say that their community participation, policies and procedures, and data infrastructure were set up to accurately identify ALL unaccompanied youth and young adults in the community. The team then set their sights on the next key milestone: Achieving quality, real-time data.

To achieve quality, real-time data, a community must complete the Youth and Young Adult By-Name List Scorecard AND record three months in a row of reliable data. This means that actively homeless, inflow, and outflow numbers are balanced. For example:

Data is considered reliable if the actively homeless number is within a 15% margin of the expected number based on the prior month’s actively homeless number and the current month’s net change. When Walla Walla began tracking their data reliability, their numbers were once 1200% greater than expected! The community’s Anchor Community team created a Data Workgroup and embarked on a journey to polish their data practices.

At the beginning of their journey, Walla Walla faced several challenges. Communities access homeless system data through the Homeless System Information System (HMIS), but as a community without their own Continuum of Care, Walla Walla does not have a local HMIS manager. The community worked with the Department of Commerce to receive monthly reports, but the community could not directly access the data to shape the reports.

Initially, Anchor Community Initiative Coordinator Sam Jackle manually calculated inflow, outflow, and actively homeless numbers based on the reports, which opened the possibility for human error in the calculations. Furthermore, the Data Workgroup realized that the definitions the Department of Commerce used in the report did not always match the information the community needed to draw from the report. For example, the Anchor Community Initiative includes young people who are couch surfing/doubled up and in temporary housing  as actively homeless, so we had to make sure that these young people were included in the report.

“Working with the data has always been a challenge because we have limited capacity here in Walla Walla,” said Sam. “Shifting the work to a more collaborative mindset with the Data Workgroup and with added Data and Evaluation capacity at A Way Home Washington really helped accelerate our progress.”

The Data Workgroup combed through the report and the numbers on a weekly basis. Through this process, the team was able to define what they needed in reporting, and then work with the Department of Commerce on creating a report that met these requirements. Once this report was created, I developed a Tableau dashboard connected to Department of Commerce data where Sam can access the numbers she needs without any manual calculations.

Tableau dashboards that accurately reflect data from Commerce’s data sources

 

“I’m so proud of our group for making it to quality data and the spirit of collaboration that led us there,” said Amanda Fowler, Data Workgroup member LOFT Administrator. “It’s been really inspiring to work with the team, and after watching the collaboration unfold in real-time, I have complete faith that we will be able to meet our goals in ending youth homelessness.”

In September, the team’s efforts paid off: Their data was reliable for three months in a row, and the team achieved quality, real-time data! Now, the community can trust that they have an accurate picture of the young people experiencing homelessness each month. As Walla Walla starts testing different reduction improvement projects, quality data will be invaluable in helping the team evaluate the effectiveness of their projects and determine where to allocate their time and resources.

Spokane Tests Improvements to Coordinated Entry

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Now that all Anchor Communities are on a path to achieve quality, real-time data, communities have started testing new strategies to reduce homelessness. In Spokane, the community’s Coordinated Entry Diversion Workgroup and Youth Advisory Board (YAB) are collaborating to test simple changes to the Coordinated Entry process and measure their impact on reducing homelessness.

Coordinated Entry is the first interaction a young person has with a service provider regarding their housing crisis. Service providers ask a series of questions to assess a young people’s needs and determine how to best connect them with resources. However, the team observed that the next steps after Coordinated Entry were unclear to many young people, and as a result many never had a second contact with a service provider. After 90 days of no contact, a young person’s status is moved to “inactive,” and if they are still experiencing a housing crisis, they would need to complete the Coordinated Entry assessment again.

YAB members suggested that the problem may be that young people leave the Coordinated Entry process without a clear understanding of what next steps to expect. They suggested testing a simple new tool: The Coordinated Entry Next Step Form. The form is a tangible resource young people can take with them, listing the date when the Coordinated Entry assessment was conducted, the date 90 days later when it will expire, a contact person that they can reach with questions or access support, and general information around possible next steps and things to work on while they wait to hear back from service providers.

“This project is so important because so many of the youth and young adults who meet with someone for a Coordinated Entry appointment leave feeling confused and unsure what should be happening next,” said Julius Henrichsen, Youth Homelessness Coordinator at Volunteers of America. “Youth input got this project started, and we’ve received incredibly valuable feedback on how this should look directly from youth experts.”

Outreach staff in Volunteer of America’s YouthReach program and SNAP began using the Coordinated Entry Next Step Form in mid-July. After two weeks, the team reconvened to evaluate results. During that time, 11 heads of household under 25 went through a Coordinated Entry assessment. Of that group, only one person qualified to receive the Coordinated Entry Next Step Form, since it was specifically formulated for unaccompanied young people experiencing homelessness. The team concluded that a longer, 90-day testing period will be required to truly measure results, reviewing progress every two weeks.

This project exemplifies many of Anchor Community Initiative’s core values:

  • Youth leadership. The idea for the project came directly from young people. YAB members reflected on their own experiences with Coordinated Entry and identified improvements to boost its effectiveness. They also shaped the creation of the form and provided insight on what would work best for young people. For instance, the form is printed on a half-sheet that young people can fold and easily fit in a pocket, for easy portability and to keep the information on the form private. “We felt it was important to understand youth perspective and hear feedback on where there has been confusion before in the process to secure stable housing,” said Amy Johnson, Housing Specialist at SNAP. “We wanted to make this resource a user-friendly, pocket sized document that clearly identified next steps.”
  • Data-driven. The team identified a clear metric to evaluate the project: Tracking the number of young people whose status changes to inactive. If this number goes down after adopting the Coordinated Entry Next Step Form, the community has a clear indication that providing more information during the early stages of the Coordinated Entry process has a positive impact.
  • Following improvement science principles. These principles guide communities to test changes that are small and measurable. This way, communities can quickly implement changes and determine if the changes made an impact on homelessness numbers. Then, communities can iterate and build on changes that have proven effective.

We are eager to see Anchor Communities test more strategies and learn what sorts of changes lead to reductions in homelessness!

Our Definition of Ending Youth and Young Adult Homelessness

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What does it mean to end youth and young adult homelessness? In the Anchor Community Initiative, we define ending youth and young adult homelessness as reaching functional zero – a state where a community’s youth and young adult homelessness system has the capacity to house every young person experiencing homelessness each month.

Exact definitions for functional zero are tailored to local communities and to specific populations. For example, reaching functional zero for youth and young adults looks different from reaching functional zero for chronic homelessness. Generally, definitions of functional zero call for communities to have enough housing, services, and shelter beds for everyone in the community who needs support. Common goals include increasing permanent housing, reducing, or eliminating unsheltered homelessness, decreasing returns to the homelessness system, and reducing the length of time that people experience homelessness.

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) provides benchmarks for ending youth and young adult homelessness. The Anchor Community Initiative’s functional zero measures are based on these benchmarks, with the addition of equity measures. We believe that communities cannot achieve an end to youth homelessness without also ending disproportionality.

Disproportionality means that young BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folx experience homelessness at higher rates than their white, heterosexual, cisgender peers. For example, in our 2018 landscape scan we found that while 4% of the population in Washington state is Black, Black young people represented 24% of youth in the homeless system. Aside from experiencing higher rates of homelessness, these young people also experience systemic and institutional racism, resulting in lower rates of placements into permanent housing, a higher rate of returns to homelessness, and longer time experiencing homelessness compared to their peers.

Our definition of functional zero takes these disparities into account. To get to functional zero, Anchor Communities must ensure that young BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folx:

  • Return to homelessness at equal or lower rate than their peers
  • Are housed at the same or higher rate than their peers
  • Spend equal or less time experiencing homelessness than their peers

Coaching our Anchor Communities to these functional zero and zero disproportionality measures keeps racial and LGBTQ+ equity embedded into the core of our work. Achieving these outcomes requires Anchor Communities to consider the impact to young BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folx in their reduction strategies and improvement projects. This approach helps team members identify and address the root causes of disproportionality and inequitable outcomes, helping us create a world where homelessness can truly be eradicated.

The Anchor Community Initiative’s Equity Plan

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Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and LGTBQ+ folx disproportionately experience homelessness. If we’re truly serious about ending homelessness, we must be equally serious about ending the systemic racism and discrimination against LGBTQ+ folx that lead to this inequity.

Often, racial and LGBTQ+ equity are perceived as “extra work” that we do in addition to the “real work” of ending homelessness. We believe that equity IS the work, and that we cannot end homelessness without it. To ensure equity is an action embedded in all our values, practices, and programs, we’ve woven equity milestones into the Anchor Community Initiative work plan. We cannot say the work is complete without accomplishing them. Here are the elements of our equity plan:

Defining Success

Last year, we defined what ending homelessness means to us. The Anchor Community Initiative is driving towards functional zero, a state where communities have the capacity to house every actively homeless, unaccompanied young person. We decided that for us, ending homelessness also means examining housing placements, returns to homelessness, and length of time experiencing homelessness for young BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folx, and ensuring their outcomes in these measures are equitable.

Education and Optimization

This year, Anchor Communities are implementing projects to reduce the number of unaccompanied youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. For these projects to truly drive towards ending homelessness, they also need to drive towards equitable outcomes for young BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folx. To make sure improvement projects are aligned with equity outcomes, we are:

  • Enhancing youth leadership in Anchor Community teams by developing partnerships with youth advisory groups that will design and select improvement projects.
  • Establishing race and LGBTQ+ equity competencies to ensure every team member is equipped to embed equity outcomes into improvement projects.
  • Coaching communities to set goals around identifying and ending disproportionality in their systems.
  • Improving the collection of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression (SOGIE) data to reduce the number of young people on the By-Name List with this information listed as “unknown.”

Full Integration

In our vision for 2021 and beyond, every improvement project will directly lead to equity outcomes. That means every project will lead to greater housing placements, reduced returns to homelessness, or less time experiencing homelessness for young BIPOC or LGBTQ+ folx. Teams will have reliable data to measure these outcomes, including quality SOGIE data for young people on the By-Name List. And Anchor Community teams will have strong relationships with youth advisory groups guiding the direction of projects. With all these elements in place, we’ll be on our way to truly end youth and young adult homelessness!

Gathering Youth Feedback in Pierce County

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For the past 12 months, Anchor Communities have been working hard to achieve quality, real-time data. To reach this milestone, communities must create ways for youth and young adults to provide feedback on their experience accessing systems. In Pierce County, the Core Team created a special committee to work on this task, consisting of Angel, Brianna, and Zaira, three young people with lived experience, and iLeana, The Mockingbird Society’s Youth Engagement Coordinator. Together, they created a new process from start to finish to gather feedback.

“Being involved from the beginning of the project is essential to calling our process co-design,” Angel said. “Everyone’s perspective matters.”

The team worked on a survey to provide young people a safe space to provide their feedback. To begin, they drafted survey questions and worked with young people at the REACH Center GED program to review their questionnaire. This gave the team guidance on how to ask the questions in a way that young people would feel comfortable providing honest feedback. Then, the team developed multiple methods to distribute the survey:

  • The team started with a computer survey. However, some young people had difficulty focusing or reading from the computer, so other methods were developed.
  • Young people were hired to ask the survey questions in person. This helped young people in crisis feel supported throughout the process.
  • Staff who interact with young people for the Coordinated Entry process were trained on the survey so they could also collect information when possible.
Zaira, Devon, iLeana, Angel, and Brianna at A Way Home Washington’s advocacy day

This entire process was led by Angel, Brianna, and Zaira. They were responsible for every detail of the project, from typing up the questionnaire to developing the survey distribution methods. iLeana supported them as needed to keep the project moving, providing coaching on matters like meeting deadlines. This approach helped Angel, Brianna, and Zaira nurture their leadership skills and take full ownership over the project’s outcome.

“It was very valuable for me to have accountability in my projects, like in creating this survey, because it lets me own my own mistakes and successes,” Zaira said.

After gathering responses, the team’s key insights from the survey were:

  • Youth and young adults need easier access to programs that teach independent living skills
  • Young people who are couch-surfing do not always qualify for resources even though they need support to access basic necessities

Our Anchor Communities value co-development of projects with youth and young adults, and this project demonstrates why this is such an important value. Youth and young adults experiencing homelessness navigate these systems every day, and we need their expertise to truly understand what’s working and what’s not. Our work needs to intentionally engage young people on a regular basis, so we rely on current and relevant insights.

“Youth need a seat at the table, and they need to be heard at the table,” Brianna said. “We need to be involved from the beginning of the process, we need to be involved in the design of solutions, and these opportunities need to be compensated and accessible for young people.”

Our partnerships with young people with lived experience are one of the reasons we believe the Anchor Community Initiative is the right approach to ending youth and young adult homelessness. With young people’s wisdom, we know we can arrive at the right solutions.

Responding to Crisis in our Anchor Communities

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Communities around the state have been rallying to support young people experiencing housing instability as the COVID-19 outbreak unfolds, and our Anchor Communities are no exception. Anchor Community Core Team meetings have provided a space for communities to strategize around ways to respond to young people’s needs during these difficult times. Check out the strategies Spokane and Walla Walla have implemented to better serve young people:

Spokane

Spokane has an established Youth Action Board (YAB) that informs youth and young adult homelessness work in the community. Following public health guidelines, YAB meetings shifted from being in-person to being online, and the community noticed a decrease in participants. The team knew that without an active YAB, their work could not move forward.

“Our Youth Action Board is critical to ensuring that youth and young adults are represented, empowered, and active participants in local decision-making,” said Cecily Ferguson, our Spokane Anchor Community Initiative Coordinator. “The group informs improvement projects and reduction strategies for the Anchor Community Initiative, and one member sits on our Continuum of Care as a voting member to help shape our homeless services system.”

Spokane set an attendance goal of 10 young people per meeting and created a plan to achieve this goal at a recent Anchor Community Core Team meeting. The team decided to:

  • Create informational materials explaining the YAB to garner interest
  • Team members volunteered to reach out directly to 1-3 young people each to invite them to join the YAB
  • Identify any technological barriers that keep young people from attending these meetings and troubleshoot these barriers

After implementing these action items, two young people joined the meeting for the first time after being referred by community partners. They came prepared to the meeting and were engaged, enthusiastic, and thoughtful in their feedback and conversation, and ended the meeting interested in staying involved. The team will continue their outreach efforts towards the goal of reaching 10 total participants per meeting.

Walla Walla

The LOFT is an under-18 HOPE Center run by Catholic Charities in Walla Walla. As the community’s efforts to house young people amidst the pandemic intensified, shelter beds remained open at The LOFT. The Anchor Community Core Team used their meetings to identify the following barriers and solutions to ensure youth could access these beds:

  • Knowledge that The LOFT remained open – With in-person outreach diminished, the team created electronic flyers to advertise broadly that The LOFT remained open. The flyers were distributed through social media and to partners like schools who remained in contact with youth.
  • The LOFT policies – When our state’s stay-at-home order went in place, The LOFT had to implement more safety measures and secure schedules. The team heard feedback that some youth accessing services found these measures too restrictive. The LOFT decided to implement morning conversations with youth to talk about and adjust the daily schedule in a way that felt more empowering to youth.
  • Direct outreach – The LOFT staff committed to follow up with youth who had previously accessed their services, to check in and provide information about resources and services that remain available.

“School closures, in-person support group cancellations, and limited access to technology are making it harder for youth to stay connected and gain access to resources,” said Samantha Jackle, our Walla Walla Anchor Community Initiative Coordinator. “We want to stay diligent and ready to adapt our outreach and case management efforts based on the needs of youth in Walla Walla County.”

After the team made information available broadly and through partners, the referral rate from DCYF increased. Youth also began to stay longer after The LOFT staff began morning conversations.

What’s Next for the Anchor Community Initiative?

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Our Anchor Communities have been making amazing progress to end youth and young adult homelessness, with one community reaching quality real-time data, and three out of four communities have completed the By-Name List Scorecard. It feels like the perfect time to highlight what’s next for A Way Home Washington and the Anchor Community Initiative.

As a refresher, the Anchor Community Initiative is based on the Built for Zero model, which has four phases. The first phase requires communities to achieve quality, real-time data. This has already been achieved by Pierce County, while Walla Walla and Yakima County are only a couple months away. The second phase is reducing. At this point, communities begin to implement improvement projects and use quality real-time data to evaluate the success of these projects.

So, what does reducing mean for to the Anchor Community Initiative? At a high-level, it means lowering the number of young people experiencing homelessness across the entire system. To start this process, our Data and Evaluation Director, Liz, has created different focus areas, or reducing process measures. Communities set goals around any of the following focus areas to start seeing reductions in their homeless numbers:

1. Lowering the number of unsheltered young people
2. Increasing the number of housing placements
3. Lowering returns from housing into homelessness
4. Lowering the average length of time young people experience homelessness

Pierce County is the first community to set a goal around one of these measures: They will focus on increasing housing placements by 30% by August 2020. As communities begin reporting race/ethnicity data and sexual orientation, gender expression and identity (SOGIE) data, they will be able to further refine their goals by adding an equity component. For example, if a community’s data shows that Black young people are housed at a lower rate than young people of other ethnicities, the community can set a goal around increasing housing placements for this population.

Communities will have access to a new tool to boost their reduction efforts: The Centralized Diversion Fund. Starting in July 2020, these flexible funds will be accessible to young people through local service providers to support them with costs like short-term rental assistance, move-in costs, and more. This will help young people stay housed and reduce the number of young people coming into the homeless system.

Youth and young adult engagement is a staple of the Anchor Community Initiative. Communities have laid the groundwork, and now they will continue to build towards the Gold Standard for youth and young adult engagement. Young people will be treated as experts and leaders in the work. This means that young people will be part of hiring, strategy development, and project implementation during this phase of the work, including choosing at least two reduction improvement projects.

Throughout all this work, we will capture best practices and successes in each community to share with other Anchor Communities and aid them in their processes. After reducing, the third phase of the work is ending youth and young adult homelessness. This means communities will create a Yes to Yes system where they have the capacity to support every young person who needs help and achieve equitable outcomes for young people of color and LGBTQ+ young people. We’re working hard to help communities end youth and young adult homelessness by the end of 2022 and sustain their achievement for generations to come!

 

 

Data to End Youth and Young Adult Homelessness

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Data is a critical component of the Anchor Community Initiative. Our Data & Evaluation Director, Liz, explains what data communities are collecting and how it will help communities end youth and young adult homelessness and achieve equitable outcomes.

Ending youth and young adult homelessness requires accurate data that tells communities how many young people are experiencing homelessness in real-time, who these young people are, and what their needs are. To achieve this, Anchor Communities have established By-Name Lists and monitor monthly data points that reflect the number of unaccompanied youth and young adults entering and exiting their homeless system.

The Anchor Community Initiative draws inspiration from the Built for Zero model by Community Solutions, which has been effective in ending veteran and chronic homelessness in communities around the nation. To follow this model, communities need to look beyond the performance of projects and programs, and towards the performance of the entire homeless system. This means that each month, communities collect three types of data points:

  • Actively homeless: This encompasses ALL unaccompanied youth and young adults experiencing homelessness each month. It includes young people who are unsheltered, sheltered and couch-surfing.
  • Outflow: This is the number of young people who exit the system each month. It includes young people who have been housed, young people who providers have not been able to reach in 90 days, and people who have aged out.
  • Inflow: This is the number of young people who enter the system each month, either because they are new to the system or returning to homelessness.

Young people who experience homelessness are individuals with unique identities. Furthermore, young people of color and LGBTQ+ young people experience homelessness at higher rates than their white, cisgender, heterosexual peers. To reflect our commitment to racial and LGBTQ+ equity, we want our data to show young people’s unique identities and shine a light on disparities. We’re pushing our data work further, and we’ve updated our data infrastructure so communities can now submit race/ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and age data. Anchor Communities have access to data dashboards showing these data points and other analytics thanks to software provided by the Tableau Foundation.

Demographic data allows Anchor Communities to further interrogate system performance and set goals around equitable outcomes for young people of color and LGBTQ+ young people. For example, in the data dashboard below we see that in this community, at least 11% of the young people experiencing homelessness in December 2019 are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer. However, the sexual orientation of over 60% of young people experiencing homelessness in this community is “unknown.” Being able to see this “unknown” percentage prompts communities and our coaching team to delve deeper into what might be happening on the ground, why these data are missing, and what improvement projects could be implemented to improve data quality.

In order to provide supportive and responsive services and housing for young people, communities must first understand what the needs are. Data provides a foundation for communities to plan and advocate for resources to support young people.

This updated data infrastructure is the first (of many) steps that we will take to achieve more equitable outcomes. The new dashboard allows us to measure improvements and reductions in youth and young adult homelessness as communities are working to make system level changes. Thank you to everyone in the Anchor Communities who works hard to submit monthly data points!

Congratulations, Pierce and Walla Walla!

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For the past ten months, our four Anchor Communities have had a singular focus: answering yes to all questions on the Youth and Young Adult By-Name List scorecard and reaching quality, real-time data. In February, two of our Anchor Communities reached exciting milestones: Walla Walla became the first Anchor Community to say yes to all 41 required questions in the scorecard, and Pierce became the third community in the nation to reach quality, real-time data for youth and young adults! This means that at any given time, Pierce County knows how many unaccompanied youth and young adults are experiencing homelessness.

To get where they are today, Pierce and Walla Walla made major systemic changes.  Pierce engaged their local child welfare, juvenile justice and education systems, and they worked closely with young people to learn how to make services more accessible.  The community streamlined the process of identifying young people experiencing homelessness and adding them to the By-Name List by embedding members of their ACT team, a youth and young adult outreach team operated by the REACH Center, across all systems. They also co-created focus groups and surveys with young people, allowing them to confirm what aspects of services are working for young people and to implement changes where needed.

In Walla Walla, the community was able to fund their first ever outreach program with the help of the $1 million secured for Anchor Communities in the state budget. Blue Mountain Action Council (BMAC) hired two Navigators, enabling the community to reach full outreach coverage. The team also benefitted from the consistent participation of two young adult team members, Charlene and Carla, who held focus groups to gather young people’s input on outreach strategies and the system. Team members also stepped up to fill gaps in capacity, like Coordinator Samantha Jackle filling the role of HMIS data lead, attending trainings and working with the Department of Commerce to learn the skills needed for the task.

We’re so proud of these teams!

Saying yes to all questions on the scorecard puts infrastructure in place to help communities better understand how their systems are serving all young people, especially those who have been historically marginalized. This information is crucial as communities move towards the goal of ending youth and young adult homelessness by 2022.

After completing the scorecard, Anchor Communities keep submitting monthly data on the number of young people who enter, exit and are actively homeless. Data must be balanced for three months to confirm its reliability. Pierce County has reached this milestone, meaning they’ve reached quality data! This means that their data accurately reflects the number of young people experiencing homelessness in real time.

Without a robust data infrastructure, young people can fall through the cracks, particularly if they were not accessing any services. Since data has a significant impact on the future allotment of funding for social services, this lack of clarity has dire consequences. Quality data allows communities to better understand how funding and resources should be allocated, and to identify disparities in outcomes for young people of color and LGBTQ+ young people. It is a critical component of ending homelessness.

Now that Pierce County has reached quality data, they will be able to evaluate the effectiveness of their solutions using dashboards designed by our Data & Evaluation Director, Liz, with visualization software from the Tableau Foundation. Data analytics will tell us if a project leads to a reduction in the number of young people who are experiencing homelessness. When data shows that a project has led to a reduction, it is an indicator that the project was effective and that we are moving in the right direction to reach Yes to Yes.

Centering Youth Voice

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Youth partnership is critical to ending youth and young adult homelessness, and it is one of our core values at A Way Home Washington. Sierra Phillips is one of our youth partnership consultants, and she shares how she has seen this work make an impact on youth and young adult engagement.

Adultism training. Being unafraid to fail. A high level of community participation. Funding for diversion programs. Accountability. These are a few of the things our Anchor Communities, Pierce, Walla Walla, Yakima, and Spokane, were proud of during the recent annual convening. And I am proud of working with an organization that consistently incorporates these values into the work we do.

Sierra presenting at the convening

I’ve been working as a consultant with A Way Home Washington for the past 8 months, and I’ve been helping the Anchor Community Initiative team make sure that youth and young adults are centered in activities like the annual convening. In preparation for the event, I was able to sit down with the team that works on the initiative every day, and with members of the local teams like Carla, an amazing young person from Walla Walla. Through this preparation, I gained the contextual knowledge I needed to make sure my recommendations helped the team come closer to their goal of centering young people in all activities.

The annual convening was a lot of fun. On the day of the event, I got the chance to connect with and meet some rad people, including the young people who are part of each community’s team. I learned what each community was doing and how their goals would impact their future work. And because we were intentional about creating a space where young people’s voices are heard, I believe this event helped each community better understand why youth and young adult engagement is so important in this work.  

I am encouraged to see that youth and young adult engagement is central to A Way Home Washington’s work, and that I continue to be consulted for my expertise on this topic. Over the past months, I’ve been called in to assist with interview panels for staff hiring at A Way Home Washington and work planning sessions for the Anchor Community Initiative.

I hope my future includes more of this work. It is because of A Way Home Washington and other similar agencies that I believe I am more than my story. I don’t have to sit on a stage and be paraded around as “the homeless person.” I am strong, I am capable, and I can do whatever I set my mind too. My future hopes and dreams today are much bigger than they previously were. I feel empowered with the knowledge that I do have a voice that matters in this work and I want other young people to feel that way as well.