CEO Nick Connolly spoke to Children and Young People Now about councils’ failure to provide suitable housing for homeless 16 and 17-year-olds. 

Coram’s December 2024 report, The Door Is Still Closed, revealed that children are being treated like adults and placed in temporary accommodation such as bed and breakfasts and hostels – despite being entitled to be taken into care. 

Responding to the findings, Mr Connolly said: “This damning report reflects a reality we see every day. The EveryYouth Network supports more than 30,000 young people experiencing homelessness and among them thousands have faced the same challenges highlighted by Coram.   

“While we are convinced advocacy has a vital role to play in helping young people navigate the system; that system only requires navigation because it is unnecessarily labyrinthine and designed to exclude rather than support our most vulnerable. The fundamental problem gatekeepers face is there are not enough beds in supported housing to meet the demand.  We estimate there are approximately 25% fewer bed today that there were before the Financial Crisis in 2010 while demand has increased significantly.  

“Early intervention should include going into schools and identifying children who have not been identified by social services”

“Moreover, there is insufficient diversity of supported housing models to meet the specific needs of the young people we are trying to help.  Should a traumatised young person, struggling with addiction or chronic mental illness, live cheek by jowl with someone revising for their exams? Do those young people need the same support?  

“As the young people interviewed for the research say, support is often too little too late. In our view, early intervention should include going into schools and identifying children who have not been identified by social services, those who are, for example, flying under the radar because they do not have physical or behavioural manifestations of their childhood trauma. In Wales, where our partner charity Llamau is pioneering the Upstream project in collaboration with schools, 66% of the children identified as needing support urgently were not disengaged with school; it was not obvious they needed help. If we support these children and their families early enough many will never need the support local authorities are effectively rationing bureaucratically.  

“We also know we can increase capacity by speeding up young people’s journey through supported housing.  As described in the report, young people need more than shelter to navigate their path to adulthood. EveryYouth works with our Network to deliver rapid access to mental health, offer intensive employability support and create opportunities that provide genuine opportunities for young people to leave homelessness behind.   

“Often even with the right support, young people living on benefits without family support in homelessness services are financial prisoners; they can’t afford college, they can’t afford, even, to start a new job because rent in supported accommodation is high, but they cannot afford a deposit to live in the private sector. EveryYouth works to remove financial barriers to education, employment, and housing through bursaries.  We pay for food, travel, clothing course fees, rent deposits, moving costs so young people can leave the spectre of homelessness behind.  

“Of course, these funds are very limited and only available to some of the young people supported through the EveryYouth Network.  Our objective is to build an evidence base to prove what all young people can achieve; even those with the worst start in life. Our view is that we need a fundamental shift in attitude.  Services designed to support young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness should be viewed as a priceless opportunity to help young people thrive rather than a tool to prevent them rough sleeping in the short term.    

“I fear until that change occurs, the increased investment, which is so obviously required, will fail to achieve real change. More beds alone will not achieve better outcomes we all want for our least fortunate young people.”