I Am the Empty Chair: Youths' Perspectives on Structural and Personal Barriers to Equity Discovered through a Shelter Photovoice Project

Background: Young adults experiencing homeless often face discrimination and marginalization that result in health inequities across physical and mental health domains. Disaffiliated from traditional institutions, young people often feel excluded and voiceless. Photovoice is a form of participatory action research in which participants use photography to document challenges in their lives. Photos are used to share participants’ voices and experiences with decision-makers and the broader community through collaborative group projects. This approach has rarely been utilized with homeless youth, leaving little documentation of the needs or challenges of this population from the perspective of the young people themselves. The current study, through photos and analysis of photo dialogues, shares social issues young adults find most important as identified through a Photovoice project at an emergency youth shelter.

Methods: This presentation shares results from a 10-week manualized Photovoice project with 10 homeless young adults (age 18-21) residing at a youth-serving shelter in Denver. Youth gathered weekly to identify social issues of importance to them, share photographs that engaged these topics, and plan a community exhibit advocating for social change. Two participant observers documented detailed field notes of every group session. Dialogues about photos were audio recorded and involved youth analysis of how such issues were experienced in their everyday lives. Data analyzed include field notes from 10 weeks of observations and 3 audio-recorded and transcribed group photo dialogue sessions. Photo dialogue transcripts were analyzed inductively using a content analysis approach and were triangulated by field notes. Finally, photographs will be shared to exemplify themes identified by youth.

Results: Photovoice participants selected three main issues to explore through photography and dialogue. First, participants discussed boredom, describing how a lack of a sense of purpose combined with limited structure to their days and time often led to complacency and depression, vandalism of shelter space, and reduced motivation to achieve goals. Second, participants discussed stereotypes, sharing about experiences of stigma and discrimination in which they felt others could not see past their homelessness status to recognize their full potential and how young people responded to such stereotypes. Finally, participants dialogued about barriers, describing situations where they felt they could not achieve a desired goal due to institutional policy (e.g., age limitations at shelters) or societal conventions (e.g., requiring addresses on job applications). These three themes (boredom, stereotypes, and barriers) were shared in a public exhibit titled “Asking for Change,” in which young people created awareness through photos, captions, and public presentations.

Conclusions and Implications: Young adults experiencing homelessness face internal, agency-level, and societal-level barriers to achieving health equity. Agencies should work towards increasing opportunities for purposive experiences that add structure and meaning to young peoples’ lives. Advocacy on behalf of, and in partnership with, young people experiencing homelessness should campaign to dispel myths and stereotypes about homelessness while reducing policy barriers to achieving stability and employment. Finally, Photovoice appears to be a promising approach to harnessing the voices and perspectives of homeless youth in order to identify important social justice issues facing this population.