DEPARTMENT FOR SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY

(2REST) Responsibilities for Resilience Embedded in Street Temporalities: mapping street youth lived resiliences through analysis of secondary data

Project disclaimer

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Description

2REST aims to explore the experinces of homeless street youth and their resilient reponses to diffculties as they grow up in contexts of stress and vulnerability in African cities. Through secondary data analysis of the Growing up on the Streets qualitative data, the objective is to go beyond individual person-centred responses to stress and understand the multiple systems involved in overcoming difficulties over space and time as young people grow up. The resulting evidence will provide a better understanding of street youth resilience and all the factors involved. The 2REST project further aims to translate these findings and apply the learning to outcomes for policy and practice in order to improve street youth lives.

Objectives

2REST will explore the 'lived resiliencies' of street youth growing up in diverse African settings, identifying specific policy and practice responsibilities for stakeholders, aligned with United Nations General Comment 21 on Children in Street Situations (UNGC21) principles, to support street youth to create successful adult lives. Conceptualising street youth as capable, but constrained by multiple vulnerable situations and contexts, requires research to consider and apply a multisystemic approach to their resilience. Responding to this aim, the extensive qualitative longitudinal Growing up on the Streets (GUOTS) data set will be analysed across three objectives, each underpinned by a series of questions (see case for support): 1.To analyse the GUOTS data set using a multisystemic resilience framework to street life experiences. Academic research has yet to apply multisystemic resilience theory to understanding the lived realities of street youth, rather focusing on the everyday challenges and stressors from an individual perspective. Where research has considered the relational nature of street life, this has tended to focus on specific contextual issues such as family engagement, peer influence on sexual health, living arrangements on the street, usually advancing young people's personal strengths and individual-level resilience focussed interventions. This objective applies multisystemic thinking to the GUOTS in-depth data on daily life experience to create a broader contextual and relational understanding of street life. This objective goes beyond individual resilience approaches which place responsibility for 'lived resiliencies' on street youth only, to consider co-enabling factors from a multisystemic perspective. These include psychosocial (relational), institutional and ecological (environmental) perspectives, translating co-responsibility for street youth's lived resiliencies towards policy and practice communities. 2.To explore the data set longitudinally using a breadth and depth approach to understand temporal changes in young people's lives, across diverse urban contexts, for creating interventions that support young people as they grow up. Analysis of GUOTS in-depth longitudinal data set offers a unique insight into the temporalities of street youth 'lived resiliencies'. No research to date has examined the cyclical and on-going nature of both acute and chronic stressors in young people's street lives as they grow up over an extended timeframe, nor explored how this may vary according to different contexts and/or markers of social difference such as age, gender, sexuality. Taking a temporal perspective will enable the impacts of stressors on key aspects of street youth lives to be viewed holistically, and through an examination of specific individual cases, show how support-enabling interventions could break repeated cycles of shocks and hardship towards better outcomes for street youth in adulthood. 3.To explore with stakeholders, how the analysed evidence base can support street youth and inform policy and practice across African and global contexts. The translation of evidence into policy and practice from a multisystemic resilience perspective is essential for shaping best practice in intervention, aligned with the key principles identified in UNGC21. Taking the findings from objectives 1 & 2, important resilience-enabling strategies will be identified and developed into policy and practice recommendations. Findings will be shared with key stakeholders through virtual advisory board meetings with recommendations emerging from through discussions and their application to diverse pan-African and Global contexts considered. Policy briefings and other implementation tools will be co-produced with advisory board stakeholders to ensure relevance. Workshops, policy meetings and knowledge exchange events will further ensure wide dissemination of evidence-informed responses and tools.

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Location

The country, countries or regions that benefit from this Programme.

South of Sahara, regional

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