The Myth of the Service-Resistant Youth

A New Report Finds It’s the Systems That Are Failing, Not the Kids

There’s a perception that many youths won’t engage with the services available to them for one reason or another. But a new report calls that myth into question by revealing the systemic issues that prevent youths from receiving the help they seek.

WestEd, a nonpartisan research center, and UCLA’s Center for the Transformation of Schools teamed up to study how two states, Colorado and Washington, provide services to highly mobile youth. Those youth include those who are homeless, living in foster care, are from migrant families, or who have been involved in the juvenile justice system.

The two states take vastly different approaches to helping these at-risk youth. For instance, the report noted that Colorado uses a bottom-up strategy in which service providers innovate, and the state then creates public policy to scale the solutions. Washington, on the other hand, uses a more top-down approach where state policy largely dictates how service providers can help vulnerable youth.

While their approaches are different, the report found that both states run into the same issue, both justice-involved and migrant youth often fall through the cracks. That finding suggests structural factors inhibit a vulnerable youth’s ability to access services.

Jason Willis, a senior policy advisor at WestEd, told Invisible People in an interview that one of the issues driving this trend is that public policy is often siloed and does not incentivize state agencies to work with one another to solve problems. State governments are also less flexible in responding to issues related to highly mobile populations, he added.

“These public agencies have no incentive to work with one another to ensure that these students are getting a continuity of support,” Willis said.

What Two Very Different State Approaches Have in Common

WestEd’s report analyzed Colorado’s Educational Stability Grant, a 3-year grant that provides school districts with funds to build community partnerships to address barriers to school stability for highly mobile youth, and Washington’s Project Education Impact, a state law that requires public agencies and schools to improve educational outcomes for students.

Researchers conducted 22 interviews with policy professionals and practitioners and reviewed relevant state and federal policies that impact each state’s service delivery methods, according to the report.

The analysis found strengths in both Colorado’s and Washington’s approaches. For instance, Colorado’s grant program resulted in a research-driven relationship among the state education department, the human services agency, and institutions such as the University of Northern Colorado and the University of Denver to track school stability, attendance, credit accumulation, and graduation for highly mobile youth. That partnership has helped the institutions improve the service landscape for youth and ensure they have access to the right supports.

In Washington, the state-led approach has helped coordinate policy and align outcomes across different systems while leveraging real-time and institutional-level data about student outcomes. That approach has helped identify areas of overlap where population-specific investments may be needed at the state level, according to the report.

Where Both Systems Break Down

Despite the benefits, both Colorado and Washington ended up running into the same problems, the report added. Both states struggled to classify highly mobile youth as such, which prevented them from accessing services that can help them. Moreover, justice-involved and migrant students were often left behind by the available services.

“On the ground, there’s kind of a misconception about migrants that’s not tied to that program specifically, and so districts aren’t claiming the funding and support that they’re entitled to under that program,” Hope Harrington, research associate at WestEd, told Invisible People.

At the same time, both states faced significant data-sharing and privacy hurdles, which can impact the ability of state agencies and nonprofits to respond to the problems these youth face.

“We see that [highly mobile youth] kind of fall through the cracks because there isn’t a lot of consistency in those data definitions and roles and responsibilities across agencies to be able to provide them with that consistent support,” Harrington said. “And … because they fall through the cracks, they don’t often get the visibility that’s needed to meet their sort of experiences in school.”

While it wasn’t mentioned in the report, Harrington said researchers discovered anecdotal evidence that the gaps in each state’s service landscape can reduce the trust homeless and at-risk youth have in the programs available to them. Migrant youth who see other migrant youth be overlooked by available services can make them think twice about asking for help. The same is true of justice-involved, homeless youth, or young people facing housing instability, she added.

The Bigger Picture: Gaps That Go Beyond Any Single Program

The report also sheds light on many of the hurdles to serving homeless and other at-risk youth that exist outside of the programs selected for the analysis. For example, it is often challenging for public policy to identify people who are at risk of becoming homeless versus helping them after the fact. That could be one reason why justice-involved youth and migrant children often fall through the cracks. Those youths are still at risk of becoming homeless, even if they don’t meet all the definitional requirements for accessing homeless services.

Many school districts and service providers also struggle to identify homeless and at-risk students. Part of the issue, as the report noted, is that there are inconsistent definitions of homeless youth and other highly mobile youth groups across agencies and jurisdictions. Another challenge is that many highly mobile groups have overlapping needs, yet funding for services and other relevant policies often lacks sufficient flexibility to piece together resources.

These challenges have become more pressing as youth homelessness continues to increase across both Colorado and Washington, as well as nationwide. According to the latest snapshot count, 400 more youths in Colorado experienced homelessness in 2025 when compared to 2024, representing a 10.3% increase.

In Washington, youth homelessness has increased by nearly 35% between 2022 and 2024, with the greatest gains among youth under the age of 18, according to data from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

To Willis, addressing these issues begins with placing a stronger emphasis on helping youths rebuild relationships that can prevent them from becoming homeless or at-risk of experiencing homelessness in the first place. After that, systems should be better aligned to work together to reach and help America’s most vulnerable young people.

“The myth [of service-resistant youth] basically promotes this idea that it’s the responsibility of the youth to seek out and obtain services,” Willis said. “While there’s personal agency that might be associated with it, a 14-year-old who is having to deal with all the other developmental and educational challenges they’re confronted with won’t have the capacity to navigate their way through the system. And even for adult these systems are extraordinarily intimidating.”

How You Can Help

The pandemic forced us to rethink housing in the U.S. and made one thing clear: targeted aid programs work. When service agencies had enough funding and clear guidance, they kept countless individuals, families, and unaccompanied youths housed during the crisis. This success highlights the urgent need for similar long-term solutions.

You can help break the cycle of homelessness by calling on lawmakers to expand and sustain these vital support systems. Urge them to support policies that:

Accurately measure the scope of homelessness

Provide pathways to connect people experiencing homelessness with housing and services

Strengthen community ties to support vulnerable people

These initiatives will ensure that unhoused people don’t just survive but thrive, giving them the resources they need to rebuild their futures.

Contact your representatives today and advocate for policies prioritizing the needs of people who are homeless. Ending homelessness is the key to a brighter future for millions of people, and you can be part of the solution.