Case Study On Homelessness

In 2013, she moved to Memphis and started working as a part time youth services at OUT Memphis, when a friend who volunteered there introduced her to the community center. When the director of youth services position began seeking new applicants, Reyes naturally applied. She was a perfect fit for the job but she did not get it. Someone else with ten years of experience dealing with homeless youth got the position initially. However, She were unable to keep up with all the after hours work that the positions demanded as she had small children at home. So they called her in for a second interview and this time she got the job. The tasks assigned to her were straightforward but daunting: improve outreach and solve the homeless youth problem. This was Reyes’ first “big girl job” and the stakes could not be higher. When she started, she was barely older than some of the kids in the program. She wishes she had the ten years of experience so she would not have to be learning everything as she goes. However, her methods and plans are truly innovative and remarkable. …show more content…
It was necessary to fully gauge the scope of the problem here in Memphis, since, as stated earlier, homeless youth are hard to find, hard to count, and hard to reach. She started working on with volunteers and partnerships with other agencies that serve youth in order to survey the population of LGBTQ homeless youth in Memphis. She began forming relationship with other existing agencies that dealt with youth homelessness, such as Youth Villages and Southwest Libraries, so they could essentially compare notes on numbers to get an accurate survey and figure out who needs help, where they are and how to reach