A young man, once caught in a cycle of addiction, arrests, and incarceration, is working to maintain his recovery from substances.  He finished serving out probation, was hired at a local company, and is awaiting a housing voucher. 

After a year of homelessness, a young pregnant girl is living in a residential program where she is learning parenting skills and rebuilding her relationship with her adoptive mother. 

These stories reflect the purpose and promise of the Connect Team, an acclaimed model of intense outreach, care, and support for the most challenged homeless youth. 

Services Provided

The Connect Team is part of the Preble Street Teen Services collaborative that includes Day One, City of Portland Health Care for the Homeless, and Portland Adult Education. The team operates out of the Teen Center and works with the corrections system, psychiatric hospitals, and other community services to provide substance abuse and mental health counseling; medical care; and education and employment assistance.

The principles of the Connect Team are:

• A low -barrier approach, with easily accessible services, regardless of treatment compliance or ability to pay.
• Harm reduction, with opportunities for safety and stability to reduce risk and harmful behaviors.
• Mobile community support, with continuity and consistency in treatment to increase engagement and success for homeless youth who have been marginalized by other treatment modalities.
• A multidisciplinary approach, with services provided within a collaborative of health care and social systems located at the Teen Center.
• Assertive treatment, providing continual assessments to adjust interventions and a care plan that reflects each youth’s personal values, goals, and cultural beliefs and empowers them to become self advocates.

All the youth served by the Connect Team struggle with mental illness and addictions.  Most have been abused or abandoned, do not have relationships with parents, or have been in the custody of the state.  All have overcome extraordinary challenges.

Their Stories

Youth involved with the Connect Team have better outcomes on educational goals, change in homeless status, and managing crisis. While we know that the numbers help describe how valuable our work is, the words of the young people themselves are more compelling. 

Every day we are moved by the tragedy in their stories: 

“We’re kids with drug problems, having sex for drugs.”

“I sit here staring down a tunnel of darkness, pitch black spiraling downward.  I think of all the reasons behind it—lack of friends, lack of family, lack of money, lack of home.”

“When you’re on the streets the only thing you can care about is yourself.  You want to care about something bigger than yourself but you can’t.” 

“Lots of things have happened to me:  tried to kill myself last month.  I also hooked myself out three times because the loneliness in my life drove me mad.”

And every day we are inspired by their courage and resilience and determination to make changes in their lives despite repeated setbacks:

“No matter how hard the world can be, you can beat it back.”

“[I’ve been] on my own since I was 14 ... I want to stay clean and find some way to help kids like me.  I want kids to know that life is what you make of it.  All people need is a hand.”

“My life has been hard . . . but [I] trust that I was put here for some purpose, a purpose that will someday make the world a better place for all.”