Youth work has lasting impact on homeless young people
Joanne Parkes
Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Accommodation initiative sees YMCA North Tyneside offer a long-term home to homeless young people and support to help develop their lifeskills.
- The project has close links with the community, with young residents engaged in helping to run services
- Residents co-create their plans with support workers, with the aim of enhancing impact
ACTION
By the time young people present as homeless, their traumatic experiences mean they are likely to need more than a roof over their heads to move on with their lives.
YMCA North Tyneside has responded with a project that combines housing provision and a co-creation style of youth work in one place – Sir James Knott House in North Shields offers 36 bed spaces to homeless young people.
According to Colette Twomey, a senior housing support worker with the project, the council’s team performs well, but it is working “well beyond” its means. This leads to young people with higher support needs accessing the charity’s services.
“We have seen a huge increase in the need for housing and are taking in residents with significantly higher levels of need, this has been greatly impacted by cuts to council services,” Twomey says.
She believes the approach is “very different” from the community-based youth work they do, but there is overlap.
“Our project is working with a specific group in a residential setting,” she explains.
“We need to combine housing management with the support, activities and youth work elements of our work.”
According to Twomey, a key benefit is the opportunity to work intensively with young people across a range of needs, increasing the chances of long-lasting impact.
She says: “By meeting the resident’s housing needs and working in partnership with them, we are able to help them create positive and lasting changes for their futures.
“They have a lot to learn in the six months to two years that they live with us.”
Young people are offered a place of safety and stability, counselling, and the chance to develop life skills including guidance through the benefit system, budgeting, and how to secure a tenancy.
There are also education, training and travel opportunities including to Europe and Asia.
“Our residents face significant barriers to services, education and training and to participating in society,” says Twomey, adding: “We can help them to develop the life skills they need to manage life in society.”
Twomey emphasises the need for young people to create lasting links in their communities while they are living there.
“They need a lot of support to be able to re-engage with and trust society and to find their way in the world,” adds Twomey.
Positive community connections are created through hosting coffee mornings, neighbourhood clean-ups with ward councillors, and running an allotment.
They grow fruit and vegetables which are used in the YMCA cafe, and they travel the country as a good practice example for other YMCAs in developing allotments and orchards.
Many demonstrate “amazing resilience” considering there is often trauma in the background, and disappointments such as repeated knock-backs from oversubscribed courses and jobs.
In some cases this can be “overwhelming” leading to anger or substance misuse, and there is the need for additional support, observes Twomey.
Underpinning the approach, is placing young people at the centre of their plans.
“Each resident is building for their own future,” says Twomey, adding: “It is vitally important that they are involved in the planning for sustained change.”
The residents are also included in designing shared spaces in the accommodation, gardens and allotment.
Twomey believes that co-creation helps support workers develop alongside young people – enhancing their listening and collaborative skills as well as their professional relationships.
“It is better for us to listen and respond than to dictate rules,” she says. “It has increased our staff’s creativity and broadened their horizons to make our service more inclusive.”
IMPACT
The YMCA team has worked with young people in developing an impact framework for the project which Twomey says is straightforward for residents to engage with. Young people set targets, look at their progress and agree levels of support they need.
In addition, the project recently won a Charity Governance Award for its work on impact, after enlisting a consultant to help draw up an asset-based approach to supporting young people.
Twomey adds that improvements have been made to the way in which progress is tracked, “so that they can see all the steps they are making, no matter whether they are big or small”.
For example, there is a focus on capturing “softer outcomes” which for many residents are experienced as “huge achievements”.
It has supported 172 young people since 2015.