The trend of targeting young people under 25 for savings in the welfare budget continues. The latest report from Homeless Link, Young and Homeless suggests that it is increasingly difficult to place young people who are homeless in suitable accommodation. Of the local authorities surveyed, 43% are still using bed and breakfast accommodation and over two thirds indicated that they did not have sufficient youth specific accommodation.

If we just take the example of emergency accommodation where a young person is placed in a bed and breakfast in a crisis, they are likely to be housed among adult offenders, adults with highly disruptive and harmful life-controlling problems and maybe even perpetrators of exploitation. Alternate options exist, like Nightstop, where young people in a crisis receive a bed for the night in the home of a volunteer. The contrast is stark - a bear pit or a sanctuary.

At 16, a person is still legally a child, and at 18 an adult. But there is no instant transformation at either age that determines maturity and independence. The needs of a young person entering adult life continue from the simple elements of learning to care for themselves to a much harder-to-achieve task - gaining meaningful employment. It is no surprise then that responsible parents, carers and local authorities draw a distinction between children and the adult population. Supported accommodation for young people has specific requirements and every local authority knows it.

That is not to say one size fits all. For some, undiagnosed mental health problems, being in trouble with the law or recovery from abuse create needs that require additional support. For others the pathway through education and family life has been smooth and an apprenticeship is on the horizon, but, for example, the lone parent has passed away and at 18 they find themselves cast out onto the street as their late parent's tenancy ends. It is a matter of needs-appropriate accommodation.

As a responsible society we cannot on the one hand say that we want to reduce the NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) population and protect vulnerable young people and then cut housing options for under-25s on the other. A stable place to live is the foundation of any education or employment. At Depaul UK we are seeing an increasing number of young people hampered in their search for work, affected by the more punitive sanctions regime. New entrants to the homeless population include, as a new cohort, those who are losing tenancies as a result of sanctions.

Tenancies as a first step are not always the way to go. The experience from our practice is that if you provide a young person too quickly with four walls, a roof and a key to their front door, all too often that tenancy will break down, causing more harm than good. The careful preparation for independent adult life needs effective supported accommodation and early intervention to prevent a cycle of homelessness that will haunt both the young person and that local authority for decades to come.

There really is only one option - to properly fund an effective pathway of care for young homeless people in every local authority in the UK. Some are there already. Boroughs like Oldham and Greenwich are commissioning whole pathways of services.

An effective youth homeless pathway is not one where you have to enter at stage one and go through every stage, but where there are sufficient options in the pathway for young people to enter a service that is appropriate to their needs. They must include emergency accommodation requirements with wrap-around family mediation and for higher needs, intensive support hostels with dedicated and experienced professionals providing care. If some commissioners can think this way, so can the others. In the end all we want is a shared agreement that every young person should have a safe place to call home.

Martin Houghton-Brown is chief executive of Depaul UK

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