Mapping multisystemic protective resources supporting resilience among street youth: a systematic scoping review of qualitative studies

Abstract

Street youth face and overcome multiple challenges. While these challenges are well-documented, also in systematic reviews, the resources facilitating street youth resilience to these challenges have not been synthesized. To close this gap, we conducted a systematic scoping review of studies reporting street youth experiences of resources that enabled them to effectively cope with street-related challenges. Scoping the literature involved a systematic search of 10 databases for qualitative or mixed methods studies that investigated the resilience of street youth aged 10 to 35. Twenty-five articles (from 3464 original records) were included, and we used a narrative approach (basic content analysis) to identify the systemic resources that street youth experienced as resilience-supporting. Guided by a multisystemic resilience approach, we found that personal resources (primarily agency and psychological ruggedness) and informal social resources (mostly other street peers) dominated accounts of street youth resilience. In contrast, very few studies reported cultural, institutional or physical environment resources, or combinations of resources, that went beyond psychosocial ones. In the absence of enabling institutional and physical environment supports, the narrow focus on psychosocial resources is unlikely to advance interventions and policy decisions that can optimize street youth resilience.