At NYAS, we firmly believe that safe housing is a fundamental right for everyone, and we welcome today’s publication of the National Plan to End Homelessness in England. No child or young person should ever grow up facing homelessness and we are pleased to see the government making it a priority to end homelessness.
Through our advocacy services across England and Wales, we too often hear that young people leave the care system only to face anxieties of finding their new home. The statistics paint a harrowing image, with 1 in 3 care leavers going onto experience homelessness within the first two years of leaving the care system. This figure should not be acceptable for any young person, let alone those for whom the state is their corporate parent and therefore responsible for them up until the age of 25.
NYAS Group CEO, Rita Waters, said: “Homelessness is an immediate and very real risk facing young people leaving the care system, and it is completely unacceptable that the homelessness system is too often used as the route out of care. I am pleased to see the UK Government acknowledge this in today’s announcements and hope that the delivery of this plan will help all young people have a safe, secure and stable home after leaving care."
Earlier this year the government introduced exemption from local connection tests for all care leavers, meaning they will soon have entitlement to priority access to social housing anywhere in England, not only in their home authority. The National Plan to End Homelessness in England includes further measures to ensure that the homelessness system is never used as a pathway out of care for young people.
The government’s commitment to working with local councils to extend good practice on how councils can provide rent deposit support to young people, including through Rent Guarantor schemes, will play a pivotal role in reducing youth homelessness. Recent Freedom Of Information (FOI) research completed by NYAS last year, found that only 42% of responding local authorities acted as a guarantor for care leavers, and 60% of these had an eligibility criteria care leavers needed to meet before being able to access the scheme. In some instances, the criteria would prove almost impossible for the care leavers to achieve and therefore of little or no benefit to them. All local authority rent guarantor schemes must be equally accessible to all care leavers, without the barrier of impossible eligibility criterion.
