In this issue...
  • Watch recorded sessions from the Edmonton Homelessness Research Symposium
  • 7 Cities Conference Seeking Speakers - Deadline for abstracts is March 21
  • Alberta Urban Health Research Network hosting forum on April 4, 2016
  • Community Voices: Insights on Social and Human services from People with Lived Experiences of Homelessness
  • Ask Me Anything!
  • Rural Homelessness in Canada: Directions for Planning and Research
  • Resources of interest
  • Putting and end to child and family homelessness in Canada
  • Resources of interest
Watch recorded presentations from the Edmon t on Homelessness Research Symposium: Mobilizing Data and Research for Action on Homelessness

The Edmonton Homelessness Research Symposium took place on February 17, 2016. The event provided evidence-based practice to a broad base of practitioners, service providers, community stakeholders, policy-makers, and researchers.

Agencies presented on the data they collect and discussed how these datasets can be accessed to conduct research that helps to end homelessness.

This session was of use to:
  • Researchers looking for new and extensive data sets
  • Researchers interested in homelessness issues
  • Civil servants whose departments serve homeless populations, especially those looking to collaborate with other departments and agencies
  • Homeless-serving agencies looking to share or combine data
This moderated panel discussion explored approaches to ensure community-engaged research drives system changes to ending homelessness. Panelists included researchers, frontline workers, and individuals with lived or living experience of homelessness.

This session was of use to:
  • Frontline workers from community agencies who serve individuals experiencing or at-risk of homelessness
  • Researchers interested in homelessness issues
  • Policy and decision makers
This event was hosted by Homeward Trust and sponsored by 
The Alberta Centre for Child Family and Community Research.
7 Cities Conference on Housing First and Homelessness Call for Speakers

The 7 Cities Conference on Housing First and Homelessness will take place in Calgary from May 5-6, 2016. Organizers are currently seeking abstracts from speakers. The Call For Speakers form will close March 21, 2016.
 
This is an opportunity for the homeless-serving sector to come together to learn, share, create dialogue and collaboratively focus our efforts on ending homelessness in our local communities and the province of Alberta. 
 
Background on Call for Speakers
Alberta Urban Health Research Network hosting forum on April 4, 2016

The Alberta Urban Health Research Network is a collaboration of health care professionals, community knowledge users, and researchers based out of the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary. The Network focuses on cultivating partnerships across the community, social, and health sectors to develop research programs that aim to improve the health of vulnerable populations. Current areas of research interest include transitions of care, addiction medicine, and harm reduction.

This forum aims to share knowledge, create sustainable collaboration across various stakeholder groups, and develop research connections. The focus is on improving health care of urban vulnerable populations across Alberta.

Keynote speakers include:
  • Dr. Verna Yiu, Interim President and CEO, Alberta Health Services
  • Dr. Anita Palepu, Professor and Urban Health Researcher, University of British Columbia
The afternoon will involve research workshops and potential thems include  Indigenous Health, Transitions of Care and Harm Reduction.


Community Voices: Insights on Social and Human services from People with Lived Experiences of Homelessness

Community Voices is a participatory action research study conducted in collaboration with people with lived experiences of homelessness in Calgary, Alberta to gather insights into service provision. Following convenience and snowball recruitment strategies, seven focus groups with members of the homeless community were conducted by trained facilitators. Participants and other community members were invited as co-researchers to analyze focus group transcripts, highlight key issues, develop themes and recommendations, and share key findings with stakeholders. Study findings suggest that people who are homeless experience oppression at the personal, cultural and structural levels which make it less likely for them to exit homelessness. 

The findings suggest that a housing first approach coupled with intensive personalized case management embedded within a human rights framework has the capacity to reduce homelessness and overcome the barriers that prevent individuals from exiting homelessness. Such interventions, however, require substantial investment to increase the stock of affordable housing units, improve current shelter facilities, and educate personnel in anti-oppressive practices and a political commitment to recognize housing as a human right.

Ask Me Anything!

Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions provide an opportunity for members of the Community Workspace on Homelessness to ask experts questions about homelessness. Each AMA features a different topic. 

The first AMA on February 3, 2016 with Wally Czech, Housing First Specialist, discussed the Housing First approach to ending homelessness. Housing First is a recovery-oriented approach, with the basic underlying principle that all people deserve housing and that adequate housing is a precondition for recovery. 

Clients are also provided with further services, including health, education, employment supports and community connections, as needed. 

Case studies from Canada and abroad have shown that Housing First can effectively reduce chronic and episodic homelessness and reduce the use of emergency services and shelters. In this AMA, Workspace members asked questions relating to available supports and services, landlord-client relationships and how to monitor and organize housing.

You will need to sign in or join the Homeless Hub to access the transcript of the Housing First AMA. Click here to access. 
Rural Homelessness in Canada: Directions for Planning and Research

Until recently, there was little acknowledgement that homelessness existed in rural areas in Canada. With a few exceptions, most research and intervention has concentrated on individuals and families living in urban areas; consequently homelessness has most often been framed as an urban phenomenon. Rural homelessness was unacknowledged, until reports from diverse rural areas began to emerge in the last decade which shed light on the unique context of the issue. 

The aim of this research was to examine and describe the dimensions of rural homelessness across Canada, the locations and contexts that have been studied, and assess the extent of common themes across provinces and regions. In this process, we were able to provide a preliminary assessment of: obstacles to identification and intervention; the challenges in determining prevalence of rural homelessness and its characteristics; determining access to shelter, food and support services, and what factors contribute to housing crises in rural areas. As there is still a scarcity of information about rural specific elements, planning and implementation responses would be enhanced through the development of a combination of a research network to facilitate knowledge mobilization and a research agenda on rural homelessness. 

Recommendations suggest the need for a fulsome research agenda on rural homelessness in Canada be developed to capture common emerging themes from a provincial rather than community-by-community perspective. This can, and should be coordinated with international and local efforts to examine rural homelessness. 

Research of Interest

Low-Income Immigrant Seniors and Housing
Investigators:  Louanne Keenan, University of Alberta;  Yvonne Chiu, Multicultural Health Brokers Cooperative; and,  Zenobia Jamal and Evelyn Zenev & Associates 
Contact:  [email protected]
Funded by:  Edmonton Homeward Trust


Immigrant seniors experience mental stress linked to their migration and settlement circumstances, dependency on their children, language barriers, isolation, lack of income, and dissatisfaction with their living accommodations. This study will explore the perceptions of low income immigrant seniors that have arrived in the past 10 years: 36 seniors will take photographs and gather in focus groups to share their photos and narratives that capture their experiences related to housing. A subset of these groups will present their findings to planners and policy makers that have the authority to put their collaborative requests into action: managing the changing housing needs alongside immigrant seniors.
Putting and end to child and family homelessness in Canada

Raising the Roof's Child and Family Homelessness Initiative is a comprehensive, three-year examination of homelessness affecting children and their families across Canada. Much of the research that has been done on homelessness focuses on adult or youth populations, but family homelessness makes up a significant percentage of the overall homeless population in Canada. Families are also one of the highest risk groups for homelessness given the extreme levels of poverty, food insecurity and housing unaffordability in this country.

Children who live in homelessness run the risk of doing poorly in school, developing negative health and mental health outcomes, having behavioural issues and struggling to exit poverty as adults. Research into the causes of youth and adult homelessness shows a connection to their living situation and experiences as a child. By focusing on preventing and ending children's homelessness, we are able to stem the flow of people into homelessness in later years.

When we talk about "children's homelessness" and "child poverty" it is important to recognize that unlike youth and adults experiencing homelessness, children are not solo, isolated individuals. Children become homeless when their family - single parent, two or multiple parents or caregiver(s) - becomes homeless. Children live in poverty because their family is poor. Therefore, it is important to understand the experiences of the adult caregivers in these children's lives. Addictions, mental and physical health issues, poverty, Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and other challenges play a significant role for many of the families experiencing homelessness. Therefore, this report pays significant attention to understanding these issues as well.

Resources of interest

Did you know that Calgary Homelessness Foundation has a blog? Access it here.
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