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Family support is vital to prevent youth homelessness, argues Rosemary Watt Wyness of charity Safe in the City.

Youth agencies recognise the importance of working holistically with young people, but only services that also involve the parents, carers and families can really claim to be delivering such an approach. This is particularly important in order to prevent homelessness among young people.

Most agencies operate with the ethos that young people need a private space where they can build trust with workers and come up with ideas to resolve their problems. This recognises the role families play in causing problems for young people, but does not acknowledge their role in developing solutions to young people’s problems. However, if we want to develop services that deal with a young person’s short and long-term needs in the round, we need to look at how family support can be integrated with services aimed at young people individually.

There is a real shortage of family support for parents with teenage children, mainly because of funding gaps. Prevention work aimed at the over-14s now being developed by the Connexions service, while valuable, is focused principally around the young person, and does not meet the needs of the family unit. Sure Start and the Children’s Fund provide preventive support for young people, which includes work with parents and carers, but it tails off once a young person reaches 14.

After 14, the only support targeted at a young person and the family is for pregnant teenagers and mothers to be, or is limited to times of crisis when social services are required to intervene. Hard-pressed social services must concentrate on those teenagers with urgent overwhelming needs, leaving many teenagers and their families with a serious support shortfall. And resources aimed at supporting young families are also swamped.

The charity Safe in the City was established to prevent youth homelessness, and with its partner projects has tried to find ways to bring together family support with personal development work. This is done through eight London-based “cluster schemes” which provide individually tailored services, involving families, to 13-18 year olds at risk of homelessness.

Shortage of support for families in conflict from other sources means that, as has happened in Lambeth, south London, in some areas our scheme has been overwhelmed with referrals from Sure Start Plus of teenager mothers or mothers to be. The charity believes that the remit of the Children’s Fund must be broadened to support intensive work aimed at families with teenagers. If not, other initiatives which aim to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged young people will fail.

The schemes’ family support work addresses the issues which are causing conflict. It includes group work sessions for parents, specifically aimed at parenting teenagers, and group work for young people focusing on a range of family, health and communication issues. The aim is to keep young people in the family home safely and to empower parents to play a more active role in their child’s development. The focus of our support targets risk indicators developed from research and experience. The highest ranking risk factor for future homelessness, identified by our Taking Risks research,¹ was that young people who did not get on with their mother were 13 times more likely than other teenagers to become homeless. The study also showed that six out of 10 young homeless people reported regular arguments at home.

These conclusions have been reinforced by the government’s Social Exclusion Unit, whose policy action team report on young people identified family conflict as a root cause of homelessness.

Support for the whole family is vital if young people are to be effectively helped. If this support is lacking, youth homelessness cannot be tackled properly.

See www.safeinthecity.org.uk

¹ Taking Risks, Safe in the City, 1999

Rosemary Watt Wyness is head of operations for Safe in the City.