Question: Are the terms homeless youth and homeless child synonymous? If not, what distinguishes one from the other?
Answer: The phrase homeless children and youth has become so widespread, perhaps due to the wording used in McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Act, that many people understandably assume that the two terms must apply to different groups. Otherwise, the wording would be redundant, like illegal guns and firearms. But if such logic suggests that children and youth are somehow distinct from one another, what is the difference between the terms?
Most people use the terms child and youth interchangeably in everyday conversation. The typical thesaurus identifies these terms as synonyms, along with other hazy terms like adolescent, juvenile, and minor. Dictionaries, however, cite puberty as the point at which a child becomes a youth, implying that one term is unique from the other. But an event-based distinction such as this allows a prepubescent 15-year-old to be classified as a child while a 13-year-old who has already experienced puberty would be considered a youth. Because maturity rates vary, this method of distinguishing between the terms is inherently flawed, so we must look to other sources for an answer.
Educational agencies and homeless service providers usually adopt definitions that are common to their field. The McKinney-Vento Homeless Education Assistance Act, which dictates policies and procedures for school administrators and practitioners who work with students experiencing homelessness, offers no precise definitions for child and youth, however. While the legislation does define the term unaccompanied youth as a “youth not in the physical custody of a parent or guardian,” the compound term children and youth is consistently used elsewhere in the legislation to describe non-adults in general. Categorization of non-adults is based on the conditions listed in Section 725 the McKinney-Vento Act, which stipulates the living conditions that qualify children and youth in general for homeless status and benefits under the Act and makes no attempt to differentiate one group from the other.
While researchers Robertson and Toro choose not to define child directly in their report for the 1998 Symposium on Homelessness Research, they do state that the term youth applies “primarily to minors on their own who have spent at least one night either in emergency shelter or ‘on the streets’—that is, in places outdoors or in improvised shelter without parental supervision.” This group, they say, spans ages 12 and 17. Within this group are subgroups of homeless youths identified by their circumstances:
- Runaways, who left home without parental permission;
- Throwaways, who were forced to leave home by their parents; and
- Street youths, who have spent at least some time living on the streets.
One might infer, then, that the researchers consider anyone under 12 who has spent at least one night in a shelter with parental permission is technically a child. While not an overt distinction, Robertson and Toro's use of parental supervision as a point of demarcation does appeal to reason.
Robertson, Marjorie J. & Toro, Paul A. (1999). Homeless youth: research, intervention, and policy, In Fosberg, Linda B & Dennis, Deborah L, (Eds.), Practical Lessons: the 1998 Symposium on Homelessness Research. US Department of Health & Human Services, Washington, DC, pp 3.1-3.32.
