The Organization:
United Way Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (KFLA) gathered a diverse group of representatives of local youth serving organizations, the municipality, school boards, youth, and eventually businesses, as part of a pilot for a national initiative to address youth homelessness locally.
The Assignment:
Looking to align the team, determine what they could accomplish together and how, Lynn led the cross-sector team in development of a stakeholder-validated Intended Impact and Theory of Change, metrics, and an action plan.
Overall Outcomes:
Like so many of Lynn’s consulting engagements consulting engagements, with her guidance, the team gained a deeper understanding of the issue they aimed to address and the barriers to success. They committed to delivering a specific, measurable, stretch-goal social impact and developed the stakeholder-validated plan necessary to direct and communicate their work. Overall, they gained impact-focused strategic clarity and alignment to make a meaningful difference.
Outcome #1:
While the temptation was to focus on reducing the percentage of youth who found themselves unhoused, the group recognized that circumstances such as mental health challenges, addictions, family relations, and more mean some youth are going to experience episodes of homelessness – this can’t all be avoided. They then recognized their objective was to make the homeless episode as short as possible. Through facilitated discussions they boldly landed on a 5-year goal: 80% of youth who enter the homelessness system maintain their housing, or are housed, within 30 days.
Outcome #2
They recognized that to achieve their stretch goal of housing 80% of youth within 30 days, the number of youth entering homelessness had to be manageable. They needed to focus on prevention. Driven by data that family conflict was the #1 issue, one of their prevention initiatives was to fund a family mediation worker, which saw a 98% success rate in keeping youth with their families.
Outcome #3
The diverse team identified that institutions, such as the hospital psychiatric ward and correctional institute, were discharging youth into homelessness…youth were being sent home without a home to go to. The team addressed this in their Theory of Change by, among other things, creating a protocol for the network to be notified when someone is being discharged, to enable the system to catch them.
Find Out More:
Collective Impact efforts support long term change, which naturally takes time. Since this initial work, the foundational Theory of Change has been updated to reflect refinements to the strategies. The minor revisions show the initial plan was on the right track and the Theory of Change continues to be used as a living tool to guide their actions and community engagement. They have been able to progress and tackle the 20% of unhoused youth who they’d deemed harder to support, expanding their strategies to support youth with mental health and addictions, including additional LGBTQ2S+ and Indigenous supports. They created a Youth Hub with 27 agencies in one location and a separate rural hub, enabling youth to stay near their support networks. This initiative also strengthened relationships and built trust in the community, laying the groundwork for tackling other community issues. The result for youth? A visible decline in street-involved youth (including at least one year of zero street youth in an annual Point in Time count) and fewer youth in emergency shelter with more being supported in transitional housing and programs.
Lynn is proud to have guided the team on their initial journey and Theory of Change development, which has provided the foundation for their long-term success addressing a complex issue. Check out their site for more about this work, including some insights from the early creation of this Theory of Change and their Collective Impact efforts in a podcast at the bottom of this page: https://www.unitedwaykfla.ca/youth/ and an announcement of the historic $1.2 million gift supporting this project.