Runaway And Homeless Youth Act

Beginning Adult Life on the Streets In 1974, the United States government enacted the first law protecting disenfranchised youth: the Runaway Youth Act of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act. This act reflected the government’s main viewpoints on homeless youth: 1) all youth were considered runaways; 2) leaving their homes was a voluntary choice, and thus 3) the youth could return home. The main intention of this act was to reunite youth with their families. In 1980, the act was renamed as the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, which was later updated to include missing youth in 1984. Over time, the government has begun to realize that some youth do not have a safe home to which they can return. However, many government programs

Unlike regular adolescents leaving home for the first time, youth aging out of the child welfare system undergo two transitions: one being the transition from care under the system to autonomy and the other being the transition from childhood to adulthood (Avery INSERT PAGE NUMBER). These youth face more challenges than the average adolescent. Therefore, without a positive support system, desperate teens find support in deviant peer relationships. High levels of deviant peer affiliations make teens “more likely to be fired from a job, to possess a diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, to report higher levels of substance use, and to report being arrested more than youth in the low or medium deviant peer affiliation groups” (qtd. in R. Avery INSERT PAGE NUMBER). Some youth prefer street families rather than normal families because relationships with street dads are survival relations and do not involve emotional intimacy; street family relationships are with peers (which is preferred because kids hold the roles of allies while adults are often viewed as abusers); and street youths are recognized as insiders who have gone through similar experiences (Cwayna

More generally, social capital “describes an interpersonal resource upon which individuals can draw to enhance their opportunities in life” (Avery INSERT PAGE