Family First Prevention Services Act: Implications for Addressing Youth Homelessness

Pathways between foster care and youth homelessness are well established and NN4Y and ChildFocus have teamed up to shine a light on the need to promote meaningful collaboration between runaway and homeless youth providers and the child welfare system. Our new paper outlines how the Family First Prevention Services Act (“Family First”) can be leveraged as one of the tools to address homelessness for youth and young adults involved in the foster care system. This paper, the first of its kind, describes both the promise and potential unintended consequences of Family First for young people in the child welfare system who also experience homelessness.