Youth Services
Each year in the United States, thousands of youth run away from home, are asked to leave their homes, or become homeless. FYSB funds organizations and shelters that provide these young people with a sense of safety, self-sufficiency and well-being and connect them to caring people who they can turn to in good times and bad.
Basic Center Grant Program
Through the Basic Center Program, community-based organizations provide short-term shelter (up to 21 days) and address the immediate needs of runaway and homeless youth under the age of 18 and their families. Youth receive emergency shelter, food, clothing, counseling and referrals for health care. Basic Centers seek to reunite young people with their families, whenever it is safe to do so, or to arrange appropriate alternative placements. Program funds are allocated to states using a formula based on the state’s population of youth younger than age 18, according to the latest census data.
Transitional Living Grant Program
The Transitional Living Program for Older Homeless Youth, a discretionary grant program, promotes the independence of youth between 16 and 21 years old who are unable to return to their homes. Over a period of up to 21 months (with a provision that allows younger youth to stay until their 18th birthdays), grantees provide housing and a range of services, including life skills training, financial literacy instruction, and education and employment services. Youth might live in group homes or in their own apartments, depending on the program and each young person’s independent living skills. The Transitional Living Program includes maternity group homes that offer an intensive array of services to meet the short- and longer-term needs of pregnant and parenting youth and to prepare them to live independently.
Street Outreach Grant Program
The Street Outreach Program reaches vulnerable youth in unstable living situations. Discretionary grants are made to organizations that conduct street-based education and outreach and offer emergency shelter and related services to young people who have been, or who are at risk of being, sexually abused or exploited.
Demonstration Projects
FYSB funds discretionary demonstration projects to study and improve the effectiveness of services delivered to children, youth and families. Past projects have expanded access to shelters for minority youth, improved services in rural areas, tested home-based services, worked to prevent exploitation of young people, established links between runaway and homeless youth programs and domestic violence programs, promoted collaboration between state and local agencies on Positive Youth Development, and captured best practices in domestic violence prevention and services.Go to http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/fysb for descriptions of ongoing projects.
