Implications for Policy and Practice

Chapter 9 illustrates the circumstances of the authors’ street-involved youth sample at the time of the last data collection point, further implications of early life trauma, and the unfairness of social policy, with suggestions for helping street-involved youth reintegrate into mainstream social institutions more easily. The youth at this point in their lives were either stable and engaged, stable and unengaged, unstable and engaged, or unstable and unengaged. Only youth in the last category were truly in difficulty, but youth in the other three categories were often left out of supports that other young people take for granted. This points to the mismatch between age and social structure, and in part this is a consequence of education, work, and social services not being responsive to their life circumstances or focused on short-term goals rather than inclusion.