Developing and Sustaining Music-Based Services for Young People Experiencing Homelessness: An Ethnographic Perspective

Purpose: Research suggests that comprehensive interventions that target the social and emotional needs of homeless youth effectively help them maintain housing stability. Additional research demonstrates that when social service agencies incorporate recreational activities in their programming they effectively engage clients’ strengths.  While additional research demonstrates the efficacy of recreational activities for engaging homeless youths’ strengths and fostering inter and intrapersonal skill development, there is little research that demonstrates how social service organizations that implement programs for homeless youth develop and sustain these important activities, especially under conditions of austerity.  The present study targets this gap in the literature, investigating how one transitional living program for young people experiencing homelessness developed a music studio.  Using ethnographic methods, this study examines the factors and processes that were involved in developing, incorporating, promoting, and sustaining the studio.  As the conditions of social service funding change, it is important for social work research to understand how organizations adapt and survive, and what their adaptations mean for the vulnerable populations they serve.

Method: Eighty hours of participant-observation were conducted in a music studio for young people experiencing homelessness over the course of seven months.  Observations of workers’ day-to-day activities were recorded in fieldnotes.  Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven youth and seven staff members connected to the music studio.  Semi-structured interviews were used to explore factors and processes involved in developing, incorporating, promoting, and sustaining the studio.  Field notes and interview transcripts were analyzed using NVivo 8.  Analysis was guided by Emerson, Fretz, and Shaw’s iterative, recursive two-phase model of coding and memoing.  Initially, data were read as a complete set and coded openly, noting initial memos.  Then, themes were selected, which was followed by more focused coding that was tied together with integrative memoing.  Finally, a thematic narrative was developed from these processes.  A second qualitative researcher checked themes and codes to provide reliability and validity.

Results: A contextual and historical understanding of how and why the studio developed emerged from the data analysis.  The studio evolved out of an organizational commitment to Positive Youth Development (PYD) and in-house holistic supportive services, which included educational, vocational, and recreational programming.  The inclusion of young people’s voices was key to recreational program development.  Ethnographic observations and qualitative interviews suggested that staff play an essential role in supporting homeless youth, providing advocacy and offering strength-based support to young people in times of acute need.  While key to the initial development of the studio, these factors continue to play a vital role in its ongoing existence.  Informants identify the music studio as an essential service that anchors the agency’s commitment to a PYD-informed approach to working with young people experiencing homelessness. 

Implications: This study begins to establish a body of research that explores how youth homelessness agencies incorporate and sustain music-based activities in their service structure.  This information can be used to advance PYD-informed program development and implementation in youth homelessness agencies.  In doing so, youth homelessness agencies can begin to conceptualize and develop similar services.