Life span

Life span

Introduction

The paper will provide the social, emotional and academic effects of homelessness on youth. Youth homelessness has profound outcomes which affect youth and their families. Youth homelessness has a negative effect on the structure of communities and nation as a whole. Research also demonstrates that more than 1.6 million people may be homeless in some time of the year (Rugg, 2010). When youth leave their home and enter the homeless population they are more chances that they involve in anti social and risky behaviors as well as becoming one of the most severely mistreated groups in the society.

Adolescents and Homelessness

Adolescence is considered as a life phase when the future patterns of adult health are established. Adolescent's health is the result of interaction between early childhood development and prenatal development and the social role and biological role changes which is accompanied by puberty along with social determinants, risk and protective factors and biological and social-role changes which affect the health related behavior. At present, the increasing research on the homeless population demonstrates that they have association to adult's homelessness experience. Previous research also highlights the effect of homelessness on well being (Rumberger et al, 2007). Research has also demonstrated that homelessness affects the psychological and physical health and leads to educational underachievement and developmental delay (Cochran et al, 2002). Furthermore, there is a need of research to investigate the impact of homelessness on the adolescents and there stages of development.

Homelessness

There are a variety of ways to define homelessness. Legal definitions of homelessness are provided by the McKinney-Vento Act and HUD. According to the Rugg (2010), homeless people lack a fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence. This definition includes children and young people who live in shelters, hotels, bus stations, and cars. It also includes children in migratory and homeless families. Bullis (2002) defines youth who are unstably housed as unaccompanied youth who have not had a lease or ownership interest in a housing unit in at least 91 days, have had three or more moves in the past 90 days, and who are likely to continue to be unstably housed. While these definitions are helpful in program development, they are rather dry and of limited clinical use.

Homelessness is considered as the adversity which challenges the ability of adolescents to utilize formal operational processes. Homelessness challenges adolescents reasoning abilities which affect their formal operations. Formal operations also allow adolescents to think on their won and develop a strong sense of autonomy which differentiation of oneself from other. Thus homelessness challenges self differentiation and autonomy similar to the earlier objective of challenges during preoedipal stages of child development. Clinicians and researchers who work with homeless youth have developed terms to reflect the etiology of homelessness. Youth who run away only for a few nights and return home are termed situational runaways. When these young people no longer return home, they are called runaways. Throw-aways are young people who were kicked out of their homes for any reason (Cauce, ...