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Homelessness: New initiatives and new partnerships in local government

Date of speech	9 May 2008
Location	Park Plaza Victoria, London
Event summary	National Youth Homelessness Scheme conference: 'Better Together - partnerships to prevent homelessness and improve outcomes for young people'

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Draft text of the speech - may differ from the delivered version.

Thank you very much for inviting me to speak to you today. It's a pleasure to be addressing the people who have been responsible for so much success over the past few years.

One of those successes has been the fall in the number of people living in temporary accommodation. The figure has fallen below 80,000 for the first time since 2001, from a baseline of 110,000.

And of course, this is down to you and your colleagues - the superb job that you have done in improving the services on offer to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
  
I want to make sure that young people at risk of becoming homeless get the absolute best service. These are some of the most vulnerable young people in society - often those who have truanted, who live in families where there is domestic violence, who experience mental ill-health or who are on the child protection register. If we get this right, we can help get lives back on track, set them on a path to a fulfilling adulthood. But if we get it wrong, the consequences can be incredibly stark. 

And that's why we've committed to stopping the use of bed and breakfast accommodation. Simply parking these young people in this accommodation when they lack the skills or confidence for independent living just isn't good enough. Bed and breakfast has no place in the kind of excellent services that we need. Too often, it just succeeds in isolating young people from their family and friends and leaving them vulnerable to exploitation.

Instead, we need to use the services we know to work - like supported lodgings, or high quality emergency accommodation, with skilled staff and lots of support, and family mediation. And wherever possible, we need to stop young people becoming homeless in the first place.

And over the past year, we've seen the number of sixteen and seventeen year olds in B&B almost halved. This is really encouraging, and demonstrates how seriously you take this issue.

Similarly encouraging is the results of a recent survey. It showed that almost ninety percent of local housing authorities either had or were planning to put in place family mediation services. More than two thirds had or were putting into place supporting lodgings. And four in five were investing in emergency accommodation for crisis situations.

This is very positive - and I hope next year to be able to report that everyone has moved from the planning phase to fully functional services.

But we know that it's not enough just to find them somewhere to live. Often these young people need quite intensive support to overcome traumatic early experiences and rebuild their self esteem.

One way of achieving that is through peer mentoring. This is particularly successful as a way of intervening early on to prevent young people becoming homeless.

Young people themselves continually tell us about how peer mentoring makes a difference to their lives - encouraging them to remain at home, stay in education and think positively about the future.

And the mentors benefit too. Eleena Fraser is now a peer educator with St Basils in Birmingham with experience of running away herself. She believes that having a peer mentor would have made a world of difference when she was going through a difficult time. She wishes she had someone who cared enough to encourage her to stay in school. Now she is that person who cares enough; who knows how many lives she will improve through mentoring?

I want to see more examples of peer mentoring to help young people such as Eleena fulfil their potential. It doesn't require millions of pounds, but it does bring about profound results.

Today is primarily about stressing the importance of joint working to support children and young people who become homeless. It can't be said often enough that better joint working is essential to success in tackling homelessness for the long term.

And it's particularly important in preventing youth homelessness in the first place. Housing authorities need to work together with other services such as Children's Services, to put the right arrangements in place for young people at risk of becoming homeless, before they reach crisis point. 

And it's essential that people take responsibility when they encounter young people at risk. Young people who get passed between housing services and children's services can fall through the cracks in the system - that is simply unacceptable. This department and DCSF have a shared ethos of prevention. That's why we are working, with the help of the Government Offices and the Training and Development Agency, to establish targeted youth support services in all local areas by December 2008. Under targeted youth support (TYS) arrangements housing authorities, in co-operation with other local organisations, can work more effectively to assess the needs of and provide a package of personalised support for vulnerable young people, including those at risk of homelessness before their problems escalate. DCSF has produced a leaflet for housing authorities outlining the benefits of working with targeted youth support arrangements - this is available in your packs.

In particular, we need to work together more effectively to support young people leaving care. There were 4,580 16/17 year olds accepted as homeless plus 627 care leavers aged 18-25, so we have to make sure that this group of young people is better prepared to cope with adult life. The Care Matters white paper, which sets out how Government intends to transform outcomes for children in care, recognises the real and pressing issue that access to stable accommodation presents to care leavers. And as the Care Matters White Paper stresses, care leavers shouldn't be moving on from their placements until they are fully ready for independent living.

And it's essential that people take responsibility when they encounter young people at risk. Young people who get passed between housing services and children's services are likely to fall through the cracks and that is simply unacceptable.

Finally, I just want to stress the importance of continuing to share the excellent work that so many of you are doing. A strategy which helps young people in your area might equally make a difference to young people elsewhere in the country. But of course, only if people know about it.

One way in which you can benefit from the latest ideas is through the using the website developed for the department by Centrepoint and YMCA England.

This knowledge base, which is written by and for those who really know what they are talking about, is a fantastic resource and I hope you continue to find it useful.

Wherever possible, the best place for young people is home.  And we should be doing everything possible to help keep families together.
 
Just one young person reaching such a degree of desperation that they would prefer to leave home is too many. And, thanks to your efforts, far fewer are now making that choice. And far fewer are going into B&B. But the outstanding progress that has been made over the past year means that I am convinced we can go even further. I hope that today gives you fresh resolve and fresh ideas about how to achieve that.

Thank you very much.