Unconditional Love is What We Do 

At Covenant House, you hear us talk a lot about unconditional love. It’s been baked into our mission from the start and defines what we truly believe makes a difference in the life of a young person facing homelessness.  

But unconditional love isn’t just something we say or believe or feel. It’s how we lead and something we act on every day. And we’re working to deepen our capacity to love our young people into healing, stability, success, and the future they choose. 

How do you operationalize love? It comes down to the transformational relationships Covenant House staff build with our youth under a unified program model that is rooted in evidence and best practices and implemented across our entire federation. 

In recent years, we’ve undertaken a strategic effort to identify and codify the key components of our program model that have made it so effective over the past 53 years. We’re updating those components in response to the needs of young people today and the changes and advances in the youth homelessness sector. 

A Genuine Caring Environment 

Our program model update began in partnership with our sites in Alaska, California, Toronto, and Vancouver, who came together with our program team at Covenant House International to explore ways to refresh and codify our model of care. The goal is to break the cycle of youth homelessness at a large scale by enhancing our model and improving outcomes for young people in a standardized way. 

In connection with the opening of two new sites, a transitional living program in Santa Clara, and a safe haven in Anaheim, Covenant House California piloted core elements of the program model. In collaboration with the teams in these locations, CHC and CHI then began to put them into action. Today, eight Covenant House sites are implementing the model and six are in the readiness stage. 

One of the young residents at the Santa Clara site told us about her experience of our program model and what Covenant House has meant to her.   

“Covenant House means a genuine caring environment, a safe space for all types of people, a place where you are able to make connections for a lifetime,” she said. “I love the fact that I was able to find out details about myself that I wouldn’t have been able to find out anywhere else. They gave me the space, the freedom, the resources, the advice, the listening ears.” 

She said she found Covenant House “a safe place to come into my womanhood,” which means a lot as young women face distinct fears, concerns, and challenges while homeless. 

We’ve built a suite of trainings, manuals, resources, and materials to support our sites and our frontline staff in their adoption of our unified program model, and we’re refining it through a continuous improvement approach in collaborative partnership with them. 

Ultimately, across all our sites in 34 cities in five countries, we aim to standardize service delivery, policies, practices, language, and outcome measurement to operationalize unconditional love, absolute respect, and relentless support for our youth and promote the best possible results for them. 

Youth Engagement and Relationship Are Core to Our Work 

Our program model, above all, prioritizes youth engagement and relationship as core to our work. It's how we love and walk alongside young people on their journey to healing and hope. For instance, we reimagine structure, which is one of our five core principles, as a means to create safety, build trust, and reduce power dynamics along that journey.  

When youth first come to Covenant House, they often bring with them the impact of massive and toxic stress, difficulty with their emotions, negative self-perception, lack of agency, and even shame. Through relationships with our skilled, trained staff, they begin to realize, often for the first time, that they matter, and they begin to develop their own power and agency.  

As a young man at our Santa Clara site told us, “Covenant House means to me a place where you can restart your life with proper guidance, support, care, love, shelter.” 

Unified Program Model and Ending Youth Homelessness 

In addition to operationalizing unconditional love, having a unified program model helps our sites and staff accomplish the following: 

• Align with best practices, brain science, and trauma-informed care. 
• Optimize welcome and transition practices.  
• Promote wellness and resilience. 
• Build youth-driven success plans.  
• Help young people develop social connections and community. 

Our unified program model will also allow us to expand our measurable outcomes to five core areas: stable housing, employment, education, social and emotional well-being, and social and permanent connections.  

“Early data from pilot sites makes clear that the updated model of care better meets the needs of the young people Covenant House serves and results in improved outcomes for individual youth, our sites, and our federation as a whole,” said Leslie McGuire, CHI chief program officer.  

That’s good news, as the success of these outcomes and the unified program model that drives them are key to measuring our advance toward our ultimate goal: to end youth homelessness as we know it today.