Study dispels myths about street youth

The kids are all right

Street kids don't become criminals or die young, a UVic study has found. They "are very hopeful and positive about the future," said social scientists Dr. Cecilia Benoit and Mikael Jansson, who authored an ongoing study called Risky business? Experiences of Street Youth. Street kids make the same choices as the rest of the population by the time they hit their mid-20s, they found after interviewing slightly more than 200 Victoria street-involved youth between the ages of 14 and 18. "Up to 80 per cent have jobs, are married and have children by age 25," the scientists said. And that's not bad for street kids who live on less than $115 per week obtained from family, friends, welfare as well as from panhandling, theft, and selling sex or drugs. Those who don't make it back into ordinary society either become permanent street people or are institutionalized, the researchers said. Only a fraction have died.

A whopping 42 per cent of street kids -- male and female - said they had used the deadly drug crystal meth in the past six months, compared to less than three per cent of kids living at home. However, returning to what looks like mainstream society doesn't mean former street kids adopt the same behaviour of ordinary families without street backgrounds, they said. But it doesn't mean they don't, because there's been no research to find out. Benoit and Jansson plan to explore that in follow-up research. The results won't be known for a few years -- until after the street kids, between the ages of 14 and 18 and first interviewed in 2002, hit age 25.

Although the street hippies of the 1970s made successful transitions into normal adulthood, the scientists noted the same might not apply to today's street-involved kids. "Family structure has changed dramatically since then, said Jansson. Hippies generally came from middle-class family homes with a stay-at-home mom and could rely on parental support when needed and return to school. Today's street kids don't have that level of strong family contact or support although, the scientists said that people on the street maintain a fairly strong level of ongoing contact with family members, social workers, and pre-street friends. A serious problem street kids face when trying to return to mainstream life is not having an address, phone number, clean clothes, and education -- all prerequisites to finding a job, said Benoit. Benoit and Jansson asked the street kids about their backgrounds, health issues and the way they led their lives. "They all have something to say and they want to tell their stories," said Jansson.

The research involved up to three interviews each with the street kids said the scientists who hope their study will help others see beyond the "stigma of homelessness" and show that street youth are much like other teens. "They have friends and lovers, and they want jobs," said Jansson. "Like other teens, they want to join our community." The preliminary analysis uncovered a number of startling facts: 35 per cent of street kids have lived in foster care or group homes -- 40 per cent of them having lived in at least four different homes before they hit age 15. When asked whether they had ever suffered from depression, 60 per cent said "yes" compared to only five per cent of similar age youth living at home.

Rudy Haugeneder
10 May 2006

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