Housing Solutions for Indigenous Youth Aging Out of Care Releases Final Road Map
On Wednesday July 28, 2021, the partners involved in Housing Solutions For Indigenous Youth Aging Out of Care in Winnipeg released the final report and Road Map at a community gathering in St John's Park. Approximately 20 community members gathered for a small panel talk featuring three speakers (Darrien Quinton & Mary) who spoke about their experiences and highlights of being involved in this National Housing Strategy innovation project.
The road map and report are available on the Fearless R2W website, but you can also view the Road Map below:
You've hopefully seen the article we published in Plan Canada this year in their social diversity issue (click here), because it clearly articulates how we went about bringing the project together. I personally want to thank HTFC Winnipeg (Zoe, Adam, Tim) for being our legal entity and all of the youth and families affected by child welfare who informed this road map. There are also nearly 100 organizations to thank, and volunteers from many prototyping groups we are indebted to!! With all that being said, here are a few closing thoughts:
The problem is the system and it's unfair for us to expect Indigenous youth aging out to have the answers. It was an honour to include Indigenous young people and I'm grateful for their participation but as they age out of the system and transition to adult hood they have lots of other worries more important than a research project. We recognize this and it relates to our next point….
Our original idea of a transitional house for youth made it onto the road map!! This tells us that Indigenous young people already knew what they wanted in the beginning of the project. I am so excited to work on making this one a reality to support youth aging out in the future!
Our recomendations aren't really related to housing at all. We ended up with 3 housing related recomendations and 20 environmental/preventative/systems related recomendations on our road map. This is a testament to something that I learned in recent years working with Indigenous young people affected by systems of family seperation: youth want to be part of a family. Some of our recommendations relate to establishing a kinship initiative and creating a wakotowin policy so organizations can be informed by Indigenous kinship systems.
What's next?
We are going to be working on these projects with Fearless R2W, North End Community Renewal Corporation and many other partners. The one I want you all to look out for for future updates is the Community Safety Host initiative, it's gonna hopefully help create employment opportunities as well as make our community a safer place. This road map will hopefully inform lots of work to happen in and around youth aging out of child welfare as we move into the future and hopefully make a better system.
Let me know if you want to be involved in implementation / helping make any of these come to be!
