[homeles_ot-l] Seeking Assistance fora Public Education Project

[Tim D. Aubry]

Dear Staff of Front Line Agencies,

 

I am writing you to request your help in recruiting one or more persons
to participate in interviews for a public education project that
involves the Alliance to End Homelessness in Ottawa.  I am the Principal
Investigator for the study and I am working with two Co-Investigators:
Fran Klodawsky from the Department of Geography and Environmental
Studies and Josh Greenberg from the School of Journalism and
Communication at Carleton University. Lynne Browne of the Alliance to
End Homelessness in Ottawa and Brenda Gallagher, are the Project
Coordinators.

 

The main objective for the project is to develop an effective public
education tool to help raise awareness about the many factors which
cause homelessness and to illustrate some of the effective intervention
strategies that have been utilized by organizations such as yours in
facilitating pathways out of homelessness. We are especially interested
in giving voice to individuals who have experienced homelessness in the
past or who are at risk of experiencing homelessness in the future. We
examined many of these issues in our previous research, The Panel Study
on Homelessness in Ottawa (Phase I and II). 

 

This project will involve videotaping interviews with 15 individuals.
In these interviews, individuals will be asked about their housing and
homelessness histories, their use of social services, the effects of
housing and homelessness on their health, and their future housing
needs.  Each individual who completes an interview will be given a $20
honorarium.

 

These interviews will be edited into 3-5 minute video clips.
Researchers from the project will follow up the interviews with comments
that make connections to the results of the Panel Study.  These edited
interviews and the researchers' comments will be made available on the
website of the Alliance to End Homelessness and the Centre for Research
on Educational and Community Services at the University of Ottawa. They
will also be copied onto a CD for easy distribution for educational
purposes. Finally, overviews of the interviews will be written up in
easy-to-read formats such as the Report Card on Homelessness in Ottawa,
and for newspaper or magazine articles.

 

We are interested in recruiting a small number of women, men, and youth
(female and male) who are homeless, to participate in an interview. We
also want to interview a small number of individuals who have stayed at
your shelter in the past and who are now housed.  Finally, we encourage
you to try and recruit at least one woman who was not born in Canada
and/or someone who self-identifies as having an aboriginal identity.
This is because the panel study sample included many individuals with
these backgrounds.  We expect the interviews to take 45-60 minutes. 

 

To recruit participants, we are asking that a designated member of staff
at your agency initially speak with potential participants about the
project, using a recruitment script that we will provide.  We are
looking for people who want to talk about their experiences of being
homeless in order to educate a wide and diverse audience.  If someone is
interested in finding out more about the study, a member of our research
team would be very pleased to meet with the potential participant and to
provide further details of the study.  People who express interest can
either have a member of your staff contact us or can contact us
directly.  Those individuals who agree to participate would then be
interviewed.  

 

The study has received formal ethics approval from the Research Ethics
Board at the University of Ottawa and is being funded through the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 

 

If you think you might know someone who would be a good candidate to
participate in an interview, please contact our Research Assistant Matt
Cosgrove at 613-234-8625, to discuss this matter in further detail.
Please feel free to contact me if you have questions about the project.
My telephone number is listed below. 

 

Thank you in advance for your support in this matter.

 

Sincerely, 

 

 

Tim Aubry

Principal Investigator

Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services

University of Ottawa

Tel.:  613-562-5800 Ext 4815

 

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