A Way Home: Working Together to End Youth Homelessness

A Way Home: Working Together to End Youth Homelessness is a Canadian nonprofit organization focused on preventing and ending youth homelessness through collaborative, evidence-based approaches that transform policy, planning, and practice. It operates as part of the national coalition A Way Home Canada, which leads a broader movement aimed at systemic change addressing youth homelessness across the country.

Overview

A Way Home was founded to reimagine solutions to youth homelessness in Canada by shifting responses away from crisis management towards prevention and sustained housing exits. The organization works with all orders of government, service providers, researchers, philanthropy, and communities—including those with lived experience of youth homelessness—to co-create and implement solutions[1][2].

Mission and Strategic Focus

The core mission of A Way Home is to prevent and end youth homelessness, emphasizing a proactive, rights-based approach that prioritizes prevention and rapid rehousing with supports. The organization’s efforts are grounded in collective impact principles, coordinating multi-sector partners and engaging “unusual suspects” such as police, landlords, and businesses to foster inclusive community engagement and systemic change.

A Way Home’s strategic work encompasses four main areas:

• Policy: Engages in solutions-focused advocacy, co-creating youth homelessness policies with governmental partners to address the complex systems driving homelessness.
• Planning: Provides thought leadership, training, technical assistance, and tools to enhance local and national systems planning on youth homelessness.
• Practice: Supports the practical shift from crisis response to prevention and sustained exits, hosting the National Learning Community on Youth Homelessness.
• Innovation: Co-leads social innovation labs aimed at developing and mobilizing new knowledge to transform youth homelessness responses[1].

Key Initiatives

Family and Natural Supports Intervention

A flagship project under A Way Home is the scaling and evaluation of the Family and Natural Supports (FNS) intervention across multiple Canadian sites. This trauma-informed, mental health promotion approach seeks to prevent youth homelessness by strengthening young people’s connections with family and natural supports, mediating conflicts, reducing isolation, and promoting wellbeing, education, and employment readiness.

The project targets youth aged 13 to 24 who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness, along with their families and natural supports. Delivered in partnership with the National Learning Community on Youth Homelessness and evaluated by the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, it spans ten youth-serving organizations across four provinces and aims to impact over 300 young people and their support networks[5].

Community Planning Toolkit

A Way Home also offers a Youth Homelessness Community Planning Toolkit designed to assist communities in developing strategic, data-driven plans to prevent and reduce youth homelessness. This resource supports local leaders and organizations in fostering coordinated, effective responses tailored to their contexts[3][4].

Approach and Impact

A Way Home’s work is characterized by its collective impact framework, which includes:

• Community Aspiration
• Strategic Learning
• High Leverage Activities
• Inclusive Community Engagement
• Containers for Change

This approach ensures solutions are co-created inclusively, evidence-based, and driven by both those with lived experience and key stakeholders across sectors. Their focus on policy transformation, systemic planning, practical shifts in service delivery, and innovation collectively contributes to transforming how youth homelessness is addressed in Canada and informs international efforts[2].

Registration

A Way Home operates under the business registration number 795393891RR0001 and is headquartered in Canada.

This nonprofit exemplifies integrative, nationwide efforts to end youth homelessness through partnership, innovation, and systemic change, making significant strides toward a future where no young person has to experience homelessness.

[1] https://awayhome.ca [2] https://awayhome.ca/about-a-way-home-canada/ [3] https://homelesshub.ca/book/a-way-home-youth-homelessness-community-planning-toolkit/ [4] https://homelessnesslearninghub.ca/library/resources/way-home-youth-homelessness-community-planning-toolkit/ [5] https://kdehub.ca/projects/a-way-home-working-together-to-end-youth-homelessness/