An estimated 65,000 youth in Canada were reported homeless or living in emergency shelters in 2009. The 2011 Metro Vancouver Homeless Count found 397 unaccompanied youth under the age of 25. These findings amounted to the highest number of homeless youth ever found in the region, a nine per cent increase from 2008 and a 34 per cent increase from 2005.
What is surprising is that many youth who have been in provincial care end-up homeless, estimates are as high as 40%. About half of teens who leave the system apply for social assistance within six months of turning 19.
Every year about 1,100 youth "age out" from care of the Crown on their 19th birthday. The prospects are poorest for those who are aboriginal or Metis. (Image from "Lighting up the Darkness," an illustrated short story about aboriginal youth in care by Steven Keewatin Sanderson. Courtesy The Healthy Aboriginal Network.)
Aging out of provincial care for many youth who have been in either foster care or have been on a youth-agreement is a difficult transition. Often these youth haven’t been prepared to take on adult roles, they have saved no money and they cannot support themselves.
This is not an easy fix. An in-depth review of provincial residential care tabled in the legislature in June 2012 exposed its particular failure in caring for aboriginal and Metis youth. Many of these youth, the review admitted, emerge from the Crown’s parenting, “at an increased risk of homelessness, school in-completion, unemployment, poverty and dependence on income assistance, and persistent and unresolved trauma.”
For more details the problem of foster care, aging out of care and subsequent youth issues, see the recent article in the Tyee upon which the above is based or Megaphone, the Vancouver Street paper.