Chapin Hall

Every day, Chapin Hall experts provide human service staff and leaders with evidence that helps them make the best decisions in their work. Among those practitioners are federal grant recipients working to prevent and end youth homelessness.

Chapin Hall has worked with jurisdictions who were awarded Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project (YHDP) grants. The goal of YHDP is to support local communities in developing and implementing a coordinated community approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness. Since 2016, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development has awarded more than 100 of these grants. In 2023, the department awarded $3.1 billion.

The grants fund, in part, the development of a Coordinated Community Plan. In two jurisdictions—Hennepin County, Minnesota and New York City—Chapin Hall served as subject matter experts for developing the plan. In this capacity, we looked at each desired outcome and compiled the evidence and data available to help inform discussion on communities’ needs and programmatic responses.

“The Youth Homelessness Demonstration Programs really bring to light the challenges that are long-standing and that are specific to those communities,” said Senior Researcher Dr. Melissa Kull. “In Minnesota, for example, it was critical for the community to understand both the needs of diverse groups of young people as well as the current capacity of their system to address those needs. In a big city like New York, we faced more complex data problems and were able to identify where there were gaps in available data and how those gaps could be addressed or at least compensated for.”

For each community, Chapin Hall pulls from its broad cross section of experienced staff to address the unique challenges and opportunities to end youth homelessness. Supports can include facilitating youth engagement, developing an outcomes framework, and collecting primary data about the local population of youth experiencing or at risk for homelessness. The evidence, data, and national experience Chapin Hall brings to the table provides both rigor and context to these local efforts.

Chapin Hall also supports federal Runaway and Homeless Youth (RHY) grantees nationwide through its work with the Runaway and Homeless Youth Training and Technical Assistance Center (RHYTTAC).

Working as a subcontractor to Youth Collaboratory since 2020, Chapin Hall has helped ensure that the training and technical assistance available to RHY grantees is informed by evidence. Every year, the Family and Youth Services Bureau of the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awards RHY program grants to public and private organizations across the country. Chapin Hall works with Youth Collaboratory to develop, deliver, and evaluate training and technical assistance for RHY grantees throughout the year.

One part of Chapin Hall’s work is conducting the annual national needs assessment, which is a survey of all Family and Youth Services Bureau’s RHY grantees. The results of this survey are used to understand providers’ needs, and to better plan for meeting those needs in the next year of technical assistance. (Click the image below to see an infographic about the 2023 survey results.)

“The needs haven’t changed much over time,” said Senior Researcher Colleen Schlecht, who has led this survey for three years. “Staff retention and fatigue is a consistent problem, as is the mental health of both the staff and the young people they serve. Service providers also want to be able to provide more family strengthening and counseling support, which helps families stay together. While technical assistance can’t meet all these needs that require additional resources, we can, for example, make sure they know the best evidence-based family strengthening programs available and how to implement them.”

Chapin Hall leads the evaluation of all RHYTTAC events and is responsible for synthesizing evidence and developing and delivering training for all grantees. Recently, we conducted a pilot project to strengthen grantees’ capacity to measure youth outcomes.

To learn more about this work, or explore how Chapin Hall can support your work to end youth homelessness, please contact Melissa Kull or Colleen Schlecht.