Mission
To walk beside traumatized youth on their journey towards healing and appropriate community integration.
What We Do
Based in Edmonton, Youth Empowerment and Support Services (YESS) provides immediate and low-barrier overnight and day shelter, temporary supportive housing, and individualized wrap-around supports for young people aged 15–24.
We work collaboratively within a network of care focused on the prevention of youth homelessness by providing youth with the necessary supports to stabilize their housing, improve their wellbeing, build life skills, connect with community, and avoid re-entry into homelessness.
The Cycle of Unaddressed Trauma
Experiences such as addiction, mental illness, violence, victimization, criminal involvement, and more can create a trauma response that is difficult for youth to overcome and heal from. Developmentally, youth do not have the cognitive or emotional skills to process these experiences and are often frozen in survival mode. These responses can create barriers to positive community involvement and integration. Families, employment, relationships, and education can all be affected by their responses to trauma, which builds up more intense responses to more intense trauma experiences. At YESS we can help youth identify positive goals and provide them with immediate resources and supports to interrupt their trauma responses and build new, healthier life skills.
Youth Homelessness Prevention
Prevention refers to policies, practices, and interventions that either (1) reduce the likelihood that a young person will experience homelessness, or (2) provide youth experiencing homelessness with the necessary supports to stabilize their housing, improve their wellbeing, connect with community, and avoid re-entry into homelessness.
