Conference Agenda

The State of the World's Children Report highlights 417 million children across the world are severely deprived of at least two of life's essentials - education, housing, health, nutrition, sanitation and clean water (UNICEF, 2025). Across the globe, children and young people experiencing homelessness can face restrictions in accessing all of the above. As of the end 2025, 1 in 78 school children were experiencing homelessness in temporary accommodation in England (Hunter, 2026). In the Republic of Ireland, 5,321 children were in emergency accommodation services (Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, 2025). Yet, how homelessness is defined and who defines homelessness influences young peoples abilities to receive supports (Sullivan, 2023; O’Sullivan, 2020). Imperatively, educational environments are identified as crucial sites for preventing youth homelessness and supporting young people and their families (Malenfant and Nichols, 2025). Nonetheless, intersecting systemic, intergenerational and psychosocial challenges continue to shape how people experiencing homelessness and housing exclusion navigate education systems.

Responding to the identified need of education in supporting youth and families vulnerable to homelessness, Peter McVerry Trust (PMVT), a national housing and homelessness in Ireland have established tailored alternative learning spaces for youth in their local communities (PMVT, 2022). For youth who are no longer in mainstream educational settings, two sites have been developed to address the needs of youth and family in socially deprived areas in the Greater Dublin to support young people continue their engagement with education (Department of Education, 2022). With an aim of supporting some of the most marginalised young people with experiences of homelessness, substance use, involvement with crime and behavioural and social challenges, the two sites offer a unique opportunity to explore the targeted supports available through an educational lens, and also to identify additional supports students in these settings may need. With 35 spaces available across two sites, young people aged 13-17 are accepted through referrals from local schools, educational welfare officers, parents and youth workers in the communities.

As hybrid educational and social care settings, education is provided through a trauma-informed pedagogical approach which blends socioemotional development, life skills and practical educational services. On-site family psychotherapy, homelessness supports and further educational service networking are provided. Additional practical access to food, health information and transport offer opportunities for core life essentials to be provided and for youth to continue to engage with education. Recognising the specific psychosocial, practical and academic needs addressed in these settings can provide opportunities for marginalised youth voices to be heard and for additional supports to be created and modified at wider systemic levels.

With this in mind, this paper specifically focuses on the stories of young people availing of these services over a two-year period. Through a mosaic approach and the use of photovoice, qualitative visual methods are intertwined to foster participant voice. A unique opportunity to see, hear and understand fluid lived experiences within this given context is explored. The relationships with staff, peers, learning space and community from the youth perspective are explored. The youth highlight the types of needs, facilitators and barriers they’ve experienced on their educational journeys and their viewpoints on engaging with alternative learning environments. Whether or not these services need to be absorbed or integrated into existing educational spaces, or developed alongside school systems requires further exploration.

Adolescence is a liminal developmental phase, marked by physical and psychological transformations and by the search for a balance in one’s identity (Ceci, 2023; Erikson, 1968). Studies place it at the crossroads between structural constraints and opportunities for agency, with entry into adulthood increasingly postponed (Arnett, 2014).

Today, this transition unfolds within a scenario of polycrisis (Morin & Kern, 1993) and a Fourth Industrial Revolution that hybridizes physical and digital spaces and reshapes relationships, educational contexts, and access to opportunities (Schwab, 2016). The pervasiveness of digital technologies and social media has altered processes of socialization and self-construction, while recent research points to a link between intensive use of smartphones and social platforms and increases in anxiety, sleep disorders, depressive symptoms, risk-taking, and self-harming behaviors (Twenge, 2017; Haidt, 2024). These dynamics are particularly evident in urban settings characterized by educational poverty, spatial segregation, and inequalities in access to opportunities, where exposure to vulnerability and adverse health outcomes in adolescence increases (World Health Organization, 2024).

Adolescent vulnerabilities emerge as psychological distress, but also as difficulties in managing emotions and relationships, with possible conflicts with rules and engagement in risky behaviors. This is especially true in urban contexts, where inequalities—constantly increasing—shape opportunities, and where these trajectories can lead to antisocial and deviant conduct. In this framework, juvenile delinquency continues to represent a widespread critical issue in adolescence, even to the point of minors’ involvement in criminal activities, which is recognized as a significant problem in several EU Member States (EPRS, 2025).

The concept of deviance, here understood as the violation of social norms, refers to a relational and situated phenomenon, linked to labelling processes and conditions of vulnerability. It is not the act itself that is deviant; rather, it becomes deviant when it is defined as such in a specific context and expresses the wounds of individuals who struggle to integrate themselves into the world (Bateson, 1972; Becker, 1963; Tolomelli, 2022). From this perspective, educational research invites a shift from a reparative logic to a framework of primary and secondary prevention and the promotion of well-being: preventing deviance also means promoting socio-emotional skills, meaningful bonds, and a sense of belonging, in continuity with positive youth development and resilience approaches (Durlak & Wells, 1997, 1998; Lerner et al., 2005; Masten, 2014). Prevention can be understood as a device of future-oriented education (UNESCO, 2021), supporting young people in imagining and building sustainable and inclusive life trajectories (Facer, 2012). It is a device that requires integrated urban educational and youth policies and the construction of collaborative community educational ecosystems, capable of connecting schools, families, social services, the third sector, and local administrations, and rooted in a “pedagogy of divergence” (Tolomelli, 2022), able to transform distress into a resource and potential deviance into participation.

The aim of the present two-phase study was to understand what, in prevention, works, for whom, and under which conditions, to inform the decisions of policymakers, schools, and services in promoting young people’s well-being in cities.

In the first phase, a realist review was conducted, guided by three questions: (1) which prevention programs targeting adolescents are effective in reducing antisocial and deviant behaviors in urban contexts; (2) in which contexts and through which mechanisms these interventions produce—or fail to produce—meaningful outcomes for different groups of young people; and (3) which factors influence their implementation and sustainability. In the second phase, a case study was carried out involving a non-profit organization that has been engaged for decades in prevention programs targeting adolescents in a complex Italian urban context.

In Lithuania, increasing attention from education practitioners and the media has been directed toward difficult-to-control, aggressive, and delinquent student behavior in schools. Although public concern about juvenile delinquency—often intensified by exceptional media attention—is a universal phenomenon (Ruigrok et al., 2017), its manifestations and consequences differ across political, cultural, and legal contexts (Sakalauskas, 2008; Sakalauskas, 2018). In this respect, Lithuania stands out internationally due to the prominence of bullying as a distinguishing feature of juvenile delinquency. While juvenile delinquency is widely understood as a common, transitional, and developmentally conditioned phenomenon associated with biological and social maturation processes (Dollinger & Schmidt-Semisch, 2011; Reinecke et al., 2013; Dollinger & Schadbach, 2013), certain forms of delinquent behavior may be rooted in complex developmental trauma linked to unsafe environments and cumulative risk factors, thus requiring differentiated institutional responses (Kinniburgh et al., 2005; Farrington, 2017).