Pilot project with DSBN to prevent youth homelessness

After successfully launching a pilot program designed to keep teenagers from heading down a path towards homelessness, RAFT executive director Michael Lethby hopes to expand it.

Lethby was at Niagara’s public health and social services committee meeting Tuesday to discuss the Upstream Project, a pilot-program run in partnership with District School Board of Niagara to identify at risk youth and provide the supports they need.

The pilot project, implemented in the spring at a single high school that isn’t being identified, has already shown results, identifying two students whom the organization was able to help.

Lethby said he hopes that through the new Upstream Project, based on an initiative that has proven successful in Australia, RAFT will be able reach out to those remaining at risk youth, too, and prevent them from winding up in RAFT’s St. Catharines shelter in the first place.

Lethby hopes to expand the pilot project to other high schools.

“That’s my goal,” he said. “I think that’s what we’re trying to work towards.”

DSBN student achievement leader Ann Harrison said the Upstream Project will be returning to the same secondary school this year, and there is hope to expand it to a second high school within the public board.

“The more we can catch students and prevent them from leaving school, which is what happens when they become homeless, the more we can support them the better off they are,” she said.

Lethby said he hopes to expand the pilot-program to other school boards, as well.

As it expands, Lethby said the program will require additional infrastructure and resources.

“Eventually it’s going to come down to money,” he said in an interview.

Lethby said the new Upstream Project also builds on the success of RAFT’s Youth Reconnect Program, launched in 2008.

Prior to implementing the Reconnect Program, Lethby said about 471 youth accessed RAFT’s emergency shelter.

As a result of that program, he said the agency has managed to reduce that number to 126.

“But we’re still at 126,” he said. “We have access now to those 126 youth that we wouldn’t have been able to access. I think it’s very encouraging. We know they’re there.” ABenner@postmedia.com twitter.com/abenner1