Working with Young People

Resources

• See Connexions a section on the nationwide service for 13-19 year olds.

• Connexions have produced a Techniques and Tools for working with young people which is a thorough good practice guide to developing skills in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Solution-Focused Therapy, Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Motivational interviewing among others that Connexions Personal Advisers have found to be beneficial in working with young people. These techniques can be beneficial in supporting many people, not just those aged 13-19 or 16-25.

• St Basils in Birmingham won the Housing Corporation's Gold Award for excellence in tackling homelessness for their work with young people. Again, much of this work, such as their exemplary service user involvement strategies, although helped perhaps by the enthusiasm of young people are examples of good practice relevant to a broader client group.

• Think before you leave home is a resource developed by the South East London Housing Partnership that addresses issues young people should consider when thinking about leaving home, as well as signposting information for those in danger in their current accommodation.

Young people and homelessness

Young people accounted for nearly one in 10 of all those accepted as homeless in 2004-05, and there is a rising trend in the number of young people being accepted as homeless: the proportion has risen from 3 per cent in 1997 to 9 per cent in 2005. This is partly due to widening the definition of those in priority need in 2002.

Of those people who contacted the SEU in response to its questionnaire in autumn 2004, 43 per cent stated that the reason young people had first got in touch with services was due to a housing need or to homelessness.

ODPM, June 2005, Statutory Homeless: 1st Quarter 2005, England. This is in part due to the widening of the Priority Need Order in 2002 to include: applicants aged 16 or 17; applicants aged 18 to 20 who were previously in care; and applicants vulnerable as a result of time spent in care.

The Social Exclusion Unit's Young Adults Questionnaire in 2005 found that Homelessness was the number one reason young people accessed services. Including housing issues accounted for 43% of presentations.

• Homelessness 34%
• Poor Housing 9%
• Drug Misuse 3%
• Barriers to Employment 5%
• Alcohol Misuse 5%
• Lack of Training/Education 7%
• Mental Health 5%
• Learning Disability 5%
• Crime 6%
• Care Leaver 11%
• Lack of ‘soft’ skills 2%
• Other 8%

Resettling young people

• In this study, Claire Hennessy and Dr Diane Grant discuss Young Homeless People and the Keys to Successful Resettlement, 2004

Rights and money

People under 25 can have different rights to benefits and housing.

Education, Training and Employment

Young people in the SEU focus groups raised a range of issues around work incentives – it didn’t always seem to them that the benefit system was working very well to make work pay. In particular, there were issues around the housing benefit system for those living in hostels – where the income from work was almost always seen as being outweighed by the loss of housing benefit, and the expense of hostel accommodation without it. Some young people also raised the issue of incapacity benefit, where they endorsed the Government’s view that changes were needed to make sure that incapacity benefit was supporting those who were genuinely sick, and also that it could put people in a benefit trap.

Young people who are 19 and over and studying full time – that is, more than 16 hours a week – cannot claim housing benefit even if they are not in receipt of any other income. This has meant that someone who is in the middle of their course when they turn 19 could lose their housing benefit and find it extremely difficult to complete their course. It also acts as a deterrent to older young people entering full-time learning (even if they are also working part-time).

• See Homeless Link's pages on Education, Training and Employment

• See Homeless Link's pages on young people

Meaningful occupation

Some aspects of meaningful occupation are particularly popular with and suitable for young people. For a case study on sport see sport and basic skills in the Activities section of Creating a positive environment.

Art, drama and musical activities allow people to express themselves and develop their talents. Cardboard Citizens is a homeless people's professional theatre company that runs free workshops for homeless and ex-homeless people. Streetwise Opera puts on high quality productions while offering activities that help homeless men and women rebuild their self-esteem and motivation.

• Nightjam is a music and photography project exploring the London night by Scanner with MCs and photographers from the New Horizon Youth Centre, the day centre for homeless young people in King's Cross.

• "In summer 2006, the centre began a collaborative project with international artist Scanner that expresses how the city at night looks and sounds to the eyes and ears of the young people who use the centre. Through music and voice the group explored the sense of freedom and fear, exhilaration and solitude of the concealing darkness. Between sessions, they captured their nights on camera. Nightjam presents two elusive visual and musical journeys through the city's "quiet" hours."
• Ten Feet Away is a homeless arts blog with visual art, audio and video from around the world.

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• In this article, artist Brendan Jackson outlines the development of the Bedtime Stories project. BEDTIME STORIES – ten tales from the street is a 48-page comic made with Sandwell Homeless and Resettlement Project. SHARP run a peer education project whereby young people who have experienced homelessness go into schools to speak to young people (mostly aged 14-16). They visited about 40 schools a year, mostly in the Black Country area of the West Midlands. The title of the comic book came from a conversation with staff at SHARP, who pointed out that the over-riding concern of young homeless was having somewhere secure to sleep for the night, and that the majority of us take it for granted that we have a pillow to lay our head down on at night, that we have a bed to sleep in and dream in.

Sexuality

• See Understanding the Experiences and Needs of Homeless Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth Executive Summary a summary of the University of Brighton's research report.
• See Homeless Link's pages on LGBT issues

• and see Meeting the needs of gay homeless young people

Substance use and mental health

● Homelessness is frequently associated with substance misuse problems; and being homeless almost trebles a young person’s chance of developing a mental health problem.

(source: Communities and local Government, 2005)

• See Making the link between mental health and youth homelessness: A pan-London study

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