In this year of recovery, we made significant progress in helping children and youth who experience homelessness obtain the early care and education that remains their surest path out of homelessness and into opportunity.
From early childhood to postsecondary, from policy to practice, from directly supporting youth to national communications and policy work, we built on our previous achievements and laid the groundwork for more to come.
On that note, this year’s retrospective comes with something new: a sneak peek at what we’re most excited about for 2023!
Thank you for your partnership and support. We wish you the happiest of holidays and look forward to working alongside you in 2023.
Homelessness is a traumatic experience that harms young children and is associated with delays in language, literacy, and social-emotional development, putting children at risk for later academic problems. At the same time, homelessness creates barriers to accessing the high quality early learning programs that can mitigate the impact of homelessness on child development, and connect families to housing and services.
We expanded our early childhood practical assistance, partnering with Pritzker Children’s Initiative, Head Start Region VI, the California Homeless Education Technical Assistance Center (HETAC), New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Wisconsin to offer learning and strategies for increasing the enrollment of young children experiencing homelessness in high-quality early learning programs.
We refined and grew the pilot of our Head Start referral app, which aims to increase the Head Start enrollment of young children experiencing homelessness and helping to bridge early learning and K-12 systems.
We published/released the first-ever state data analysis and policy recommendations on infant and toddler homelessness. Despite research showing the injurious impact of homelessness on our youngest children, there were no estimates of how many infants and toddlers experienced homelessness, or how many participated in high-quality early learning programs–until now. SHC’s ground-breaking report establishes a set of benchmarks against which to assess progress, and provides a policy and practice roadmap at the local, state, and federal levels for increasing access to life-changing high-quality early learning programs.
Erin, SHC’s Director of Education Initiatives, presented at a session at the NAEHCY conference in San Diego, California titled, “Baby Steps: Data on Infants and Toddler Experiencing Homelessness”. She is seen here with staff from Lexington District 5 in South Carolina.
Erin, SHC’s Director of Education Initiatives, conducted a two-day conference with the New Hampshire homeless education liaisons in April.
We led work on the smart, strategic, and effective use of the historic $800 million appropriation for children and youth experiencing homelessness provided through the American Rescue Plan Act. Building on last year’s top advocacy accomplishment, we rolled up our sleeves to convene educators, offer tools and trainings, and collect information to help communities leverage these one-time COVID-19 resources into sustainable support for children and youth experiencing homelessness. Our report, Progress & Promise, highlights six state and thirty-one local innovative efforts to make the most of American Rescue Plan Act Homeless Children & Youth Funds (ARP-HCY) and shows the early impact of this much needed investment in the education of some of our nation’s most vulnerable students.
Despite increasing skepticism about the value of higher education, it remains true that pursuing education beyond high school is the most reliable and enduring way out of poverty: eighty percent of “good jobs” are held by workers with at least some postsecondary education, and in 2021, the unemployment rate of individuals with only a high school degree was nearly twice that of those with a bachelor’s degree. Higher education also appears to be a protective factor against young adult homelessness: a 2019 study shows four-year college enrollment to be nearly four times higher for young adults without experiences of homelessness in the prior 12 months than for young adults who lacked such educational attainment (52% compared to 15%).
We successfully advocated for timely implementation of policies to remove barriers to financial aid for homeless and foster youth. SHC’s persistent advocacy helped ensure that legislative reforms to the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for homeless and foster youth that were enacted in 2020 went into effect this year, and were not delayed, as initially contemplated by the U.S. Department of Education. We made the case with Congress and the U.S. Department of Education, including releasing a report demonstrating the significant impact of the pandemic on FAFSA completion for youth experiencing homelessness and youth with experience in foster care.
Jillian, SHC’s Senior Higher Education Program Manager, and Barbara, SHC’s Executive Director, presented on the new FAFSA provisions for homeless and foster youth at NASFAA in Austin, Texas.
The SHC team (Roshanda, Barbara, Jillian, Rodd) presented on federal and state FAFSA updates and best practices at the NAEHCY conference in San Diego, California.
To overcome homelessness through education, we must reform the systems that impact the lives of children, youth, and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness. To this end, SchoolHouse Connection engages in policy advocacy at the state and federal level.
SHC Director of State Policy, Rodd Monts, delivers a presentation on advocating for youth homelessness policy reform during a roundtable event in Western Pennsylvania organized by the American Bar Association’s Commission on Homelessness and Poverty and the National Network for Youth.
SHC Director of State Policy, Rodd Monts, joined legislative champions of HB 385, Rep. Kyle South and Sen. Kirk Hatcher, for the signing of the bill by Gov. Kay Ivey.
We were thrilled to add Senior Policy and Advocacy Manager Ashanti Jones to our team this year. She will increase our capacity to advance both state and federal policy work, and to help integrate our state and federal policy advocacy.
We launched our first-ever Youth Policy Corps, a year-long program during which young people who are part of our Youth Leadership & Scholarship program receive monthly training on policy advocacy, and participate in educational activities. Scholars attend a monthly training, monthly virtual advocacy meetings, write an Op-Ed, and attend an in-person advocacy trip in Washington, DC. Youth Policy Corps participants receive a stipend for their participation.
SHC’s Youth Leadership & Scholarship (YLS) program provides a scholarship award, college completion resources to meet emergency needs, one-on-one help navigating college and life, and a stable peer and adult support network. Currently, 66 young people are in our YLS network; this will increase to 76 youth in January 2023.
The YLS program on-boarded Roshanda Pinson, MSW as a program manager to assist with case management services, which allows for more in-depth services across the board.
“Getting to meet with staff at USICH and the Department of Education was an experience I’ll never forget. Resources are nothing without a support system AND accurate representation across the board, which is a table that I can always count on SHC being the first at. SHC has helped instill a new sense of respect in myself. They give us so many opportunities, even being “fun”, giving us opportunities to speak on things that we’ve been silenced on for years. I do believe that they are a voice of the youth, if not one that projects our voices. I am so forever thankful for the friends who have slowly become my family and for all of the opportunities SHC has given us.”
“You never feel alone when you’re among those who’ve experienced what you have in a way. For me personally I have found a home through SHC despite not having an actual home. The memories you’ll hold onto forever, the friendships you never expected to make, the lessons you’ll learn, and the path you choose to walk and grow, are all a part of being a SHC scholar.”
Child and youth homelessness is largely hidden from sight – from the public, and from the practitioners and policymakers who are best positioned to help. The early care and education challenges created by homelessness are also obscured, contributing to a failure to prioritize the educational needs of children and youth experiencing homelessness and to support solutions. SchoolHouse Connection actively works to increase the visibility of child and youth homelessness and the role of early care and education in helping permanently break cycles of homelessness.
SHC appeared in 57 media stories
In January, SchoolHouse Connection and Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan will publish comprehensive data profiles on child and youth homelessness, searchable at national, state, and local levels. We’ll save the most exciting part until next month, but suffice it to say the data profiles will compile information in new ways that make it easier to educate decision makers at all levels.
Following the release of our report on infant and toddler homelessness this year, we’ll be working with a set of states to provide strategic assistance and establish actionable goals, and to provide practical assistance to several communities within those states to help increase outreach, identification, and enrollment of families, infants, and toddlers experiencing homelessness.
In the first quarter of 2023, we’ll launch our comprehensive online training modules to help ensure educational access and success for children and youth experiencing homelessness, and support school districts and charter schools in meeting federal professional development requirements.
Many institutions of higher education are designating liaisons for students experiencing homelessness. Similar to their counterparts in K-12 education, homeless higher education liaisons support students by connecting them to available resources on and off-campus, and removing barriers to their college retention and success. In 2023, SHC will launch a learning network for higher education liaisons to help them implement state and federal policies, bridge the gap between K12 homeless liaisons and higher education, and identify best practices and barriers for identifying and supporting students experiencing homelessness.
