Youth Empowerment Services (YESS)

Youth empowerment services (YESS)

This organization is dedicated to getting homeless youth off the streets of Edmonton. Although it is classified as a homeless shelter it provides many other essential services. Along with food, clothing, and shelter; it provides youth with assess to doctors, housing, school, addiction councilors, and mental health councilors. The main culture within YESS is homelessness and it has three main sub-cultures; Drug addicts, mental health, and gangs. Because of what the sub-cultures are there are many run-ins with the justice system both for good and bad reason.

Justice system

There have been many mixed thoughts revolving around the justice system, there are some that approve of the system and find no fault, and

The cycle begins when the youth becomes is homeless; it takes about 7 days for a youth to be accustomed to living on the streets (YESS, 2017). In this time they build relations and friendships that they deem to be special. The next step is when they make bad decisions because of the new “friends” they have mad. This leads to having trouble with the law and therefore they get arrested. When the youth serve their time they are released into the community but they are still homes. As such the cycle continues in those five steps.

It’s a pretty well-known fact that people who are homeless are at a high risk of being incarcerated ( Mayock, 2013). This fact is increased in relation to youth as they are more influential than adults. Along with youth being influential, there is also the evolution of drugs that makes living on the streets harder. Over the last 25 years the number of drugs that have “hit” the streets has increased tenfold than it was in the 90’s ( Mayock, 2013); because of this many youth struggles with drug addiction, mental health issues and gang affiliation. Although drugs are not the main cause of those struggles it is one of the leading

He believes that youth need the interaction with other youth in order to create a normal and safe environment. The absence of school leads youth to befriend youth from the streets and as such leads then to make chooses that affect their mental health (Bembo, 2016). When youth live on the street for an extended period of time and they build a family but when that is taken away they suffer from depression and aggression. There is also the youth who have had mental illness from the beginning; when this is the case it’s the unfit parents up further there disability. For example, there is an individual who accesses YESS who suffers from mental illness, their parents are meth addicts and as such were unable to take care of the youth. The youth now attends the homeless shelter with no way of seeking medical treatment of their mental