Written evidence submitted by New Horizon Youth Centre [HOL 32]

I am making this submission as the lead agency in the London Council’s funded Pan London ‘Youth Homelessness Commission for London’ , The London Youth Gateway (LYG).  New Horizon Youth Centre and its seven partners would like to see the issue of youth homelessness prioritised in this inquiry due to rapidly growing demand, welfare benefit changes, pressures on local authority services, and London’s housing situation. Partnerships like the LYG are best placed to help local authorities deliver on (preventative) strategies around young people and housing need.

In particular I would like to highlight the following points:

London  boroughs

• Since 2013 on the LYG has successfully worked with 12,000 beneficiaries from across London boroughs; a number that has steadily increased over the years. The majority of these young people were not referred to us by Local Authority Housing Departments and therefore would not be included in statistics collated by the LA’s. 

• We deliver about 450 satellite and outreach sessions per year, in inner and outer-London boroughs. We have also connected young offenders via our prison outreach service. 

• Prevention services are increasingly important and entail off-site services to help prevent homelessness across London boroughs, including floating support, resettlement visits, family mediation, and advocacy. The LYG partners are helping increasing numbers of young people from the outer boroughs in need of this type of support, compared to stabilising figures in inner borough beneficiaries.

• Nightstop volunteer hosts via our partner DePaul UK, are now located in nearly every borough, providing much needed emergency accommodation.  But we do not have nearly enough to cope with ever increasing demand. 
• Avoiding  duplication of existing local service provision is of paramount importance in this current climate and we ensure that this is achieved by  a) making annually around 800 referrals so that young people are reconnected to relevant agencies in their own borough, and b) using prevention, outreach and wider network activities so that it will not be necessary for young people to present at local authority housing options services in the first place.

• Importantly, a pan-London reach is crucial to this client group as well as local authorities because a) it is a highly transient client cohort in terms of borough connection and lifestyle, b) many vulnerable young people do not have a London borough connection, especially new EU migrants and young people from elsewhere of the UK, yet do require services to help them return to their families or enable reconnection, c) it is unsafe for many beneficiaries, especially young offenders and those who are homeless due to experience domestic violence or sexual exploitation, to return to their borough of connection and/or access services there, d) there is an uneven availability of relevant services across London

Youth homelessness – emerging needs

• The dearth of suitable, affordable accommodation causes fewer young people to be able to access housing, creates family pressures due to overcrowding, and increases waiting times for young people sleeping rough or in other urgent housing need. With further pending changes in housing policy and increasing PRS rents, we anticipate that such difficulties will continue for in the foreseeable future.

• Pending changes in welfare benefits, specifically the removal of the automatic housing support entitlement for 18-21 year-olds, will affect young people across London, meaning that demand for services such as advice around benefits, debts and finances tailored to this specific client group, will be even more in demand. A youth focus and expertise is precisely what young people themselves have indicated they need, according to recent Youth Access research. Given uneven availability of relevant services in the capital, a proven pan-London approach, such as the LYG partnership model, seems crucial in order to reach those areas where demand exceeds local provision.

• We have noticed ever growing provision gaps caused by changing or dwindling statutory and voluntary service delivery, including prevention work, targeted youth work and support around e.g. mental health support and youth offending support. Such gaps occur across all London boroughs. , so the pan-London reach of the LYG helps to ensure that vulnerable.

• Our evidence reveals  growing demand for specialist services for young people in housing need who identify as LGBT, young people experiencing domestic violence and/or sexual exploitation, young offenders and people who are gang affiliated.

• We believe that services that directly links accommodation with employment, such as Private Rented schemes are more likely to support  beneficiaries making the tricky transition from benefit to employment so that they do not lose their accommodation. 
• Both the upcoming Youth Obligation legislation and the fact that young people tend to receive low wages in often precarious employment create the need for specialist provision and expertise of helping young people, especially those in housing need, to secure apprenticeships, work, training and/or education. 

In addition, over the past three years we have evidenced increasing demand within the 12,000 cohort for: 

• support in addressing underlying problems such as mental health, emotional and/or behavioural issues
• advocacy, which is becoming increasingly relevant to the
• low threshold primary health care and counselling
• benefit advice, debt support and financial literacy development
• intensive and ongoing employment, education and training supporting, including ongoing help when young people transition into employment and/or accommodation
• in-housing accredited training, including numeracy, literacy,

Moreover, and especially by working in consortium, it is possible to maintain and develop the specialist understanding and activities that will maximise the impact for specific groups, such as homeless LGBT young people, young migrants, gang-affiliated young people throughout London.

Importantly, the voluntary sector also offers the expertise in helping engage the most hard-to-reach young people who are homeless or at risk to access the services they need. The LYG, for instance, has proven this by being able to increase very effectively its pan-London outreach and availability via college, prisons and young offenders institutes and satellite advice service throughout the capital.

February 2016