Participatory Design in the Co-Creation of a Roadmap for Information for Youth Homelessness Prevention

We present our participatory design approach, which actively involved diverse stakeholders with an emphasis on inclusiveness, equality, and openness to co-create social innovation as a roadmap for information infrastructure to prevent youth homelessness across Canada. Following our foundational learning about homelessness data and its use from the existing literature and interviews, we engaged with a diverse group of stakeholders to co-create the roadmap. Our design process was guided by the Conceptual Framework for Participatory Design in Sensitive Contexts, whose principles include valuing lived experience, support for participation while respecting participants’ choices and agency, adopting asset-based approaches, and attunement to relationship dynamics. Youth facilitators with lived experience played valuable roles in creating a safe space, addressing power dynamics, and eliciting youth voices that helped shape youth-centered recommendations. In addition, we had end users— researchers, policymakers, service providers, people with lived experience of youth homelessness, and Indigenous communities—help co-design the roadmap, in order to support their perspectives. Despite building relations and navigating resources and priorities in a time-bound project being challenging, this work provides insights into how similar work can be done to support large-scale plans for change around vulnerable youth.