See the research behind the news story
Posted on 17 April 2015
It can be estimated that at least 78-80,000 young people experienced homelessness in 2008/9 across the UK
A story in the Daily Telegraph last week ‘How football gives hope to the homeless’ quoted CHP research on the levels of youth homelessness every year.
The news story was about the head of coaching at the Homeless Football Association, James Buckley who is preparing to coach the England team in the forthcoming Homeless World Cup. The vision of the Homeless World Cup, who are base in Leith, Scotland, is to use the power of football to transform the lives of homeless people all over the world. Now 70 countries are involved with the HWC - involving hundreds of thousands of players since 2003. This year’s competition will be in Amsterdam, last year it was Santiago in Chile.
The research undertaken by CHP was looking at possible solutions to the problem of youth homelessness. It was commissioned by the charity Centrepoint which helps homeless young people. Part of the work was to define both what ‘homelessness’ and ‘youth’ meant so that the objectives could cover all aspects of homelessness and not just those which were more achievable.
The objectives that were proposed at that time were:
- No young person should sleep rough for more than one night once in contact with an appropriate statutory or voluntary sector agency.
- Young people should not have to stay in emergency accommodation for longer than an agreed specified period (for example, three months).
- Young people should not remain in transitional accommodation when it is appropriate for them to move onto more independent accommodation
- All young people leaving an institutional setting (care, hospital, prison) should have a suitable housing destination, with relevant support, before discharge.
- All young people who cannot remain in the parental home should be offered suitable accommodation and support within a defined pathway plan to independence.
Ideas for the development of a service network to support these goals were also discussed. Read the full 'Ending Youth Homelessness' paper here.
This work followed on from a large research project for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on Youth Homelessness in the UK which was a UK-wide review of youth homelessness and explored whether policy had developed in an effective way and recommended key priorities for the future.