This is the early registration rate for organizational members who which to attend the event virtually.

This is the early registration rate for individual members who which to attend the event virtually.

This is the early registration rate for non-members who which to attend the Summit virtually.

This is the early registration rate for youth who which to attend the Summit virtually.

This is the early registration rate for students who which to attend the Summit virtually. Verification of current student status is required to register at this rate.

Finding a Safe Place in a New Country: Understanding and Serving Immigrant Youth in Your Community

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

You are in a new country, you don’t speak the language and you are not sure where you are going to sleep or when you will be able to eat. This breakout session will dive into the challenges unaccompanied immigrant youth face and their strengths while exploring ways in which service providers can successfully engage this population, accurately identify needs, and collaborate efficiently to optimize outcomes. This session will also highlight policy issues and some recommendations.

Higher Education & Homelessness: Barriers, Strategies, and FAFSA Support

SchoolHouse Connection

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting many students’ decisions about higher education. College enrollment and FAFSA completion numbers have gone down more than 20% compared to last year, dropping even more in lower-income communities. Yet some form of postsecondary education remains the surest permanent way out of homelessness. This session will focus on unique barriers, including the FAFSA, that youth experiencing homelessness face accessing and succeeding in higher education. We’ll provide practical strategies to assist youth during the pandemic, hear youth perspectives, and review examples of best institutional practices to get students to and through higher education.

Preventing the Perception of Neglect; Lack of Stable Housing Shouldn’t Equal Family Separation

National Association of Counsel for Children

The child welfare system is increasingly turning its attention –and funding–toward early intervention and primary prevention. This presentation will highlight a number of innovative approaches that providers, communities, and the child welfare system can utilize to prevent homelessness from resulting in the child welfare system separating families. Facilitators have lived experience of homelessness and/or the child welfare system.

Supporting Graduation for Students Experiencing Homelessness, During Covid and Beyond

SchoolHouse Connection

This session will provide hands-on advice and strategies for the education of youth experiencing homelessness, including:

• Strategies schools are using to help keep students engaged in school
• Strategies schools are using to help students be successful with distance learning
• College planning and transition during the pandemic
• Thinking ahead to next year and helping students catch up and fill gaps

School-community partnerships to meet students’ basic needs

The Upstream Project, Hopkins: Emerging Lessons for School, Service Provider, and Research Partnerships

Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago

In 2017, the Pohlad Family Foundation funded MoveFwd, in partnership with Hopkins Public Schools (HPS) and Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, to develop, implement, and evaluate a pilot of the Upstream Project, a pioneering multi-tiered system of support model that aims to prevent youth homelessness and school dropout. The Upstream model has four core components: community collaboration, early identification through universal screening, service connections, and casework. Community collaboration relies on an active and engaged Steering Committee comprised of local stakeholders. The early identification component uses a universal screening survey in the junior and high schools to identify the students who are homeless or at risk of homelessness or school disengagement/dropout. HPS then connects students with priority service needs with MoveFwd, which provides casework and other resources to students and families. In this session, we describe how the Hopkins partners defined their roles and implemented each of the components of the Upstream model. We will also focus on the challenges that the COVID-19 pandemic has presented to the implementation of school-based homelessness prevention programs.

Where to start: How to Turn DEI Concepts into Practice

Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) service providers recognize the need to engage in deep dialogue, learning, and conversation on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to improve outcomes for families, youth, and young adults. In 2020 (and 2021), racial unrest in the country and community distrust of systems and programs work to create an environment where RHY, families, and communities are hesitant to seek services. In this session, participants will be able to understand the key concepts of DEI, as well as discuss frameworks that organizations can use to move their DEI work forward.

Recognizing that DEI is a continual process that requires collaborative, multi-dimensional interventions, this session is an opportunity for organizations to be a part of a continual learning community that will continue to meet monthly to process their journey to DEI work.

Cross-Systems Youth Homelessness Prevention: Examples from Canada and the US

A Way Home Canada

Building upon pre- Summit online sessions, we will explore the important roles of systems in preventing youth homelessness. Building on earlier webinars that introduce the major shifts we’ve been making and grappling within Canada around youth homelessness prevention as a concept and in frontline practice, participants will be invited to explore the current state of systems that cause and prevent homelessness. Together we will imagine what an ideal future state would look like with examples drawn from both Canada and the United States and with a view to what roles the NN4Y can play in advancing youth homelessness prevention in locally, state-wide or at the federal level.

See. Learn. Do. REPEAT: Centering Youth Voice for Systems Change

Pride Action Tank

The child welfare, educational, and criminal justice systems collectively create a set of barriers and difficulties that disproportionately affect LGBTQ+ youth. There are few formal platforms for these systems to work together and rarely do they include young people. This interactive workshop will focus on how you can center youth voice through human-centered design (HCD). Participants in this workshop will test and apply tools for engaging youth to revamp existing policies, practices, and services and create new ones.