A place for all seasons: Examining youth shelters and the youth-in-trouble network in Toronto (Ontario)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study focuses upon youth shelters as non-profit, voluntary organizations, and their relationship with formal child welfare systems. Two case examples, Covenant House (CH) and Youth Without Shelter (YWS) are examined through archival material, participant observations of "shelter culture," and structured/unstructured interviews with front line and managerial shelter workers. These methodological tools provide a distinct portrait of the evolution, the "life stories," and the present day activities of two prominent Toronto youth shelters. The findings suggest that both Shelters' operating goals have been modified in order to reach a. suitable partnership with more entrenched and formal child welfare organizations (such as the Children's Aid Society). CH and YWS were envisioned by their architects as "alternatives" and "buffers" from the impersonal arid bureaucratic formal system. However, both Shelters are now increasingly described as "dumping grounds" for formal system players, and less of "alternative havens" or "buffers." CH and YWS are currently crowded facilities predominantly harboring "system kids" rather than "street kids." The consequences of such an arrangement are threefold: 1) CH and YWS no longer possess an internal environment to support traditional street kids; 2) Both Shelters no longer exist as "short-term emergency crisis centers" and have strayed from their original intentions; and, 3) Many shelter workers feel frustrated and impotent in working within this dynamic. Two distinct explanations for CH's and YWS' transformation are discussed, as well, numerous recommendations are provided regarding the survival of such youth shelters.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".