Open for business: exploring the life stages of two Canadian street youth shelters

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, Dec, 2002 by Jeff Karabanow

Youth shelters have emerged as significant resources for homeless and runaway adolescents. Through participant observations of shelter culture, review of agency archival materials, and in-depth interviews with 21 shelter workers (front line staff, middle managers, and upper-level executives), this analysis explores the life stages of two Canadian street youth shelters, highlighting the dramatic transformations in their internal operations and external environments. This paper also offers an understanding of organizational evolutionary processes.

Introduction

In the late 1970's and early 1980's, street youth shelters were established as safe houses for homeless and runaway youth. These organizations provided basic needs services (i.e., shelter, food, clothing) and short-term counseling supports. Soon after its inception, the youth shelter evolved into surrogate parents for this abandoned and/or nomadic population. Homeless and runaway youth regularly characterize youth shelters as helpful and needed services (Alleva, 1988; Janus, McCormack, Burgess and Hartman, 1987; Karabanow, 1994; 1999; Karabanow and Rains, 1997). Accordingly, youth shelters achieved credibility from their client base, and at present, they are a significant resource for troubled adolescents throughout North America.

This paper documents the life stages of two prominent Canadian street youth shelters, Covenant House (CH) and Youth Without Shelter (YWS), in order to highlight their significant transformations throughout the years. The stories of YWS and CH are a striking portrait of conflict begetting change and change begetting innovation. The external network of youth shelters consists of other organizations, clients, and the community. Each of these constituents places expectations upon youth shelters, some of which may not necessarily be compatible with the shelter's mandate. This paper examines the major trends in the local histories of CH and YWS, highlighting the Shelters' interactions with clients, other organizations, and the public. The analysis also explores organizational change behavior.

A study of youth shelter evolution is useful for several reasons. First, the number of people living on the streets grows each year. Some experts in the field suggest that the present homeless situation is approaching "national disaster" status. However, there is little research regarding the types of organizations that exist to help this population. There is even less known about their interactions with one another. By shedding light upon how specific agencies work (and work together), we can discover whether a given population is actually being helped within that system. As noted by Hall and Clark (1975:113), "In the delivery of human services, for example, the recipient of those services is clearly influenced by the nature of the system which delivers them. Is he passed from one organization to another? Is he fought over or avoided by organizations in the system? Is he overserved or underserved?" My analysis uncovers such queries.

Second, we are now in the midst of a political environment that espouses neo-conservative values and neo-liberal economics that advocates for less government in the market place and a replacement of state care with community care. As argued by Henry (1987:152) in his analysis of two voluntary shelters in the United States: "Today, with cutbacks in the public welfare system, especially general assistance, the problem of homelessness requires an even heavier commitment from the shelter organizational population." In this sense, it is not only timely but necessary to investigate and understand the actors who are increasingly assuming the role of caring for our society's disadvantaged.

Methodology

The methods of investigation within this study are naturalistic--employing participant observations of shelter culture, review of agency archival materials, and in-depth interviews with 21 shelter workers (front line staff, middle managers, and upper-level executives). With these methodological tools, I constructed each shelter's local history, highlighting its life story and evolutionary process. Fieldwork spanned ten months (between November 1998 and August 1999) and incorporated both ethnographic (immersion into the field) and grounded theory (allowing theory to fit the data) approaches. Data analysis involved chronologically organizing historical material in order to build each shelter's life story, comparing cases (to each other, to other youth shelters and to the literature), and linking and categorizing common themes that emerged from the data.

I selected two cases which varied in terms of age, size, and location. Moreover, these shelters were chosen to represent diverse operations, varied statuses within the youth shelter system, and disparate relationships with the youth-in-trouble network (i.e., formal and informal agencies which are generally involved in the lives of disadvantaged and disturbed adolescents).

Established in 1982, CH is the oldest street kid shelter in Canada and maintains a legitimate and reputable status among street kid agencies and the Toronto public, due to its large funding base, experience, media savvy, and professional style. It approximates a formalized and professionalized organization with well developed technologies, procedures and resources. Funded primarily by the Catholic Church (through the ShareLife organization) and private donations, CH is often described as a conservative agency which views itself as rescuing kids from the horrors of street life. Its conservative style is reflected in the shelter philosophy, rules and structure (for example, early curfews, dress code, structured plans and assessments, and anti-abortion position).