Strength Based Assessment -- LGBT Homeless Youth The objective of this study is to describe the process that would be used for completing a strengths-based assessment for LGBT homeless youth.

In order to make a strengths-based assessment for LGBT homeless youth, the social worker or advocate must first examine what is available to assist LGBT homeless youth in the way of services and assistive information that will serve to empower LGBT homeless youth to overcome their present situation.

Services that homeless LBGT youth are in need of include medical and health care services, access to housing, nutrition, counseling where needed as well as access to educational institutions including higher education at colleges and universities. The social worker is in a unique position to assist these youth in gaining access to these resources. Social workers work from a viewpoint of the principles of human rights which are formulated upon the basis of the worth and dignity of each individual and freedoms that are fundamental and that enable the individual in developing their full potential.

The work of Hopper, Bassuk and Oliver (2010) report that being homeless serves to render the individual without very basic needs and to expose the individual to environments that are fraught with danger and such danger as cannot be foreseen....

Often LGBT youth who are homeless have suffered trauma during their development that may include being neglected or abused and may have not formed the natural attachments in their lives as do other individuals. All of this serves to pave the way for the homelessness they are presently experiencing.
The violence that the individual suffered as a child often carries over into their adult life and in the form of domestic violence which oftentimes results in the individual becoming homeless. Once homeless, the LGBT youth is further a victim to those who take advantage of their vulnerability. Trauma is such that experientially creates for this individual a life that is in a constant state of fear. The effect of stress resulting from trauma makes it very hard for the individual who is homeless and they often experience homelessness over a long continuum. In fact, the research shows that individuals who have the repeated experience of homelessness were those who were most often abused as children. (Hopper, Bassuk and Oliver, 2010, paraphrased)

According to the Department of Health and Human Services in its publication entitled "Toward Understanding Homelessness: The 2007 National Symposium on Homelessness Research," while collaboration is being promoted among agencies there are still barriers that keep the systems to undergo a…