I have been doing this work long enough to know that the moments that truly change your perspective are rare. Bournemouth, on March 19th, was one of them.
When Stephen Gaetz and I stepped onto Bournemouth Pier in Dorset, England, alongside Prince William and an international delegation of youth homelessness leaders, I felt genuine excitement. The kind of excitement that comes from watching something you have believed in for years actually happening, at scale, with the full weight of committed leadership behind it.
It started at an international conference. Stephen and I met the Royal Foundation‘s then-Head of Programmes, who extended a simple invitation: “If you’re ever in London, come and present to our team.” We took him up on it. That first visit in 2024 led to a second in 2025, focused on scaling youth homelessness prevention program models. By March 2026, the relationship was three years old, and the meeting in Bournemouth felt less like a formal occasion and more like a reunion.
Here’s how we got there, and why it matters for our youth homelessness prevention efforts in Canada.
What Homewards has built is genuinely exciting
First, let me tell you about Homewards, because I don’t think enough people in Canada know about it — and they should.
Homewards is a five-year program launched in 2023 by Prince William and the Royal Foundation of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Its goal is to demonstrate that homelessness can be made rare, brief, and unrepeated. It operates across six flagship UK locations — Aberdeen, Bournemouth/Christchurch/Poole, Lambeth, Newport, Northern Ireland, and Sheffield — each with a locally-led coalition, a dedicated local lead, up to £500,000 in flexible seed funding, and a research partner to evaluate and share what’s working.
The Prince of Wales joins international delegations to see Homewards’ groundbreaking youth homelessness work in action. Picture by Andrew Parsons / Kensington Palace
What makes Homewards so exciting to me is that it is built on the same principles A Way Home Canada was founded on: you cannot end homelessness from one office or one organization. It takes a coalition. It takes every sector from government and community to education, health and business, all pulling in the same direction, with a shared goal and shared accountability. At the centre of it all is a prevention-first approach.
The program doing that most directly is Upstream — a school-based early intervention model adapted from the Australian Geelong Project that uses surveys to identify young people at elevated risk of school disengagement and homelessness and connects them with support before a crisis occurs. At The Bourne Academy in Bournemouth, a housing rights worker funded through Homewards is already reaching families who didn’t know help was available.
As The Big Issue reported on the day of our visit, principal Mark Avoth described parents reaching out by email that very morning: “We didn’t know they were facing these issues. Raising the profile has already had an impact on prevention for certain families.” That is exactly what we mean when we say prevention works.
We know this because we’ve been trying to do the same thing in Canada. Upstream Canada works, but scaling it has been harder than it should be. Scaling requires sustained, coordinated investment across sectors that rarely fund together. Homewards has figured out how to close that gap.
Canada currently has two Upstream projects running in five schools. The UK is on track for six projects across approximately 40 schools. That number stayed with me the entire trip.
For a closer look at what the research says about why this approach works, and what it will take to close this gap, see Stephen Gaetz’s analysis of the evidence on the Homeless Hub.
On leadership — and what it makes possible
I want to say something about Prince William, because his role in this work is not ceremonial and it would be a disservice to describe it that way.
He is engaged. He asks substantive questions. He meets with the Homewards team, provides input on strategy, and shows up not just at high-profile events but in schools with young people and teachers. That kind of sustained, senior commitment is everything when it comes to building a coalition. It signals to every partner in the room that this is serious, that it is long-term, and that walking away is not an option.
That is what A Way Home Canada has been working to cultivate in Canada: leaders, philanthropic and governmental, who are willing to make that same kind of sustained public commitment to ending youth homelessness. Watching what Prince William’s involvement has made possible for Homewards made me more convinced than ever that finding and nurturing that leadership here at home is one of the most important things we can do to advance our youth homelessness prevention efforts.
What I’m bringing home
I left Bournemouth feeling truly inspired. Our connections with the Royal Foundation are supercharging our work. The models we have tested and developed in Canada for youth homelessness prevention are being implemented in the UK. The lessons the UK is learning at scale are flowing back to us. We have a platform for shared learning and collaboration that feels more alive, and more urgent, than ever.
In Canada, we need investment that is concentrated enough to let communities implement, evaluate, and learn, rather than scattered across disconnected one-off projects. And we need champions: people and organizations who are willing to say publicly, and to back with their platforms and their resources, that preventing and ending youth homelessness in Canada is achievable.
Young people in Canada deserve the same thing that young people across the UK are beginning to receive: a system that wraps around them before crisis hits, that treats homelessness as the preventable condition it actually is, and that truly believes that they deserve to thrive.
A final note: thank you to the Royal Foundation and the Homewards team for the invitation. We are thrilled to be part of this work, and we can’t wait to see what comes next.
Feature image: Melanie Redman meets with Prince William alongside international delegates on Bournemouth Pier. Picture by Andrew Parsons / Kensington Palace