Working with young people to tackle homelessness

St Christopher’s welcomes Homeless Link latest blog post about what concerns homeless charities the most. In the top six were preventing homelessness, increasing the supply and quality of accommodation something that St Christopher’s is actively involved with.


Homeless Link research suggested that 86% of charities working in the sector are interested in measures that can be taken to prevent homelessness. Moving up five places from the previous year, it shows a significant change in the provision of services to make sure fewer young people end up homeless.

This is mirrored by the End Youth Homelessness UK campaign that is asking for a better provision of services to support young people.

As a charity we exist to create brighter futures for vulnerable children and young people, including those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

St Christopher’s runaways service

We provide a runaways service in North London for young people up to the age of 18 who have run away from home or gone missing. We:

• Identify and address any harm the young person might have experienced while running away
• Help the young person and their family understand and address the reasons why they have run away.
• Provide further one-to-one support to help prevent them running away again.

Increasing the supply and quality of accommodation available

79% of homeless charities identified increasing the supply and quality of accommodation available as a challenge. With rising rents and a shortage of affordable houses it is becoming increasingly difficult for young people to move out of services like our 16+ accommodation and support.

We provide accommodation with support for young people aged over 16 who have found themselves homeless. Towards the end of 2013 we opened our new West London transition service to help care leavers and homeless young people with the transition to independence.

We also have Knowland House that offers accommodation and tailored support packages for vulnerable young people. We work with a range of needs including, young people facing homelessness, care leavers, young parents and those with learning difficulties or mental health
problems.

All of our young people have access to our life skills programme and tailor-made support package to help them learn how to become independent and keep a record of how far they’ve come.

Why we are supporting the End Youth Homelessness campaign?

We have many years of experience of providing services that meet the first two “asks” of the End Youth Homelessness Campaign.

We therefore support the End Youth Homelessness campaign and, in particular, “asks” 1 and 2:

1. Free mediation, advice and support services must be available in every local authority area to families and young people at risk of homelessness.
2. Schools should play a key part in the prevention of homelessness through education work, early identification and appropriate referral of those young people at risk of homelessness.

We believe, as demanded in “ask” 8, that local authorities should work with specialist providers like St Christopher’s to make high quality supported housing, and floating housing support, available to vulnerable young people who need it.