Supporting Young Adults Transitioning Into Housing: Building Charge Up!

"Charge Up!"—a team-based intervention aimed at bolstering mental health and housing stability for youth transitioning from homelessness to housing. It's crucial to note that a significant portion of young adults facing housing instability also grapple with mental health issues. However, existing Rapid Rehousing programs often lack dedicated mental health services. Through the Charge Up intervention, we've integrated a mental health role, focusing on a person-centered approach to delivering crucial mental health services to young adults in transitional and rapid rehousing programs. To ensure its effectiveness, we actively sought input from various stakeholders, including the youth advisory board, case managers, and other relevant parties involved in the development of Charge Up.

Charge Up Team Members:

Sarah Carter Narendorf, LCSW, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development Graduate College of Social Work focuses on ensuring a successful transition to adulthood for marginalized young people. She is particularly interested in the transition to young adulthood for youth with mental disorders who face additional challenges including homelessness and involvement in foster care or the juvenile justice system. This interest has led me to investigate where, when, and what type of services can most effectively support these young people as they navigate both developmental and institutional transitions.

Her interest in mental health services stems from a decade of practice experience working with children, youth, and adults across the continuum of care from school outreach to the maximum security unit of a state mental hospital. Her interest in adolescent mental health began in Houston through her work doing street outreach with Youth Advocates, Inc. and Communities in Schools. Her practice experience informs both her teaching and research and has fueled her desire to ensure that her research is relevant to social work practitioners.

Marcus Brown, MSW, LCSW is a fourth-year PhD social work student, a twelve-year mental health practitioner, and a licensed clinical social worker. Marcus has over ten years of experience in the social work profession, where he served in various social work roles in inpatient and outpatient mental health settings. Marcus is an upcoming social worker scholar and educator whose research focuses on Black adults with serious mental illness and their help-seeking for formal care, informal care, or both.

Justin “Prince” Hayward is a young adult advocate whose friends call him Prince. His positive and negative experiences in CPS and being homeless have made him into the man he is today. Currently, Mr. Hayward is an active leader in the Houston area and not only a member of two other formal young adult advocacy boards, including Travis County Child Welfare Re-Imagined Family Preservation Leadership Council (FPLC) and National Youth Forum on Homelessness, He is also an appointed member of DFPS Public Private Partnership Council (PPP). Prince has led several trainings such as preventing runways and has been very effective at using his story to advocate for policy changes & budget increases at the state capitol.

Learn more at uh.edu/socialwork/actionresearch