Dear Liz Truss: You need to care about young people’s futures
A former Centrepoint service user writes a letter to Prime Minister, Liz Truss, calling on the government to prioritise increasing support for homeless young people.
Our blog is a safe space where we discuss the things that really matter to us: young people, housing, government policy, our campaigns and our research.
It's where we ask the difficult questions, demystify the jargon, discuss the topics that affect young people most and give you a glimpse of our day-to-day as a youth homelessness charity.
A former Centrepoint service user writes a letter to Prime Minister, Liz Truss, calling on the government to prioritise increasing support for homeless young people.
Aldo Zilli returned to help us front another vital campaign highlighting the realities of food poverty in the UK.
Centrepoint has updated and published our Universal Credit guides for young people and those supporting them. They include information on the up-to-date benefit rates, rules, and regulations within Universal Credit. Our Policy and Research Assistant, Franki Taylor, talks you through it.
In this episode young mum and former Centrepoint resident Bethany hosts a frank and honest discussion about young motherhood.
Eurydice Belezika, Peer Research Coordinator and former Centrepoint resident in London, talks about her experience of conducting research and campaigning to support disadvantaged young people.
This episode looks at how young people in supported accommodation are often worse off when they work more hours.
Our research estimates nearly 122,000 young people asked for help from their local council in 2020-21 because they were homeless or at risk. Dan Poursaeedi, Centrepoint's Senior Policy, Research and Databank Officer, explains the findings of the recent Youth Homelessness Databank report for 2020-2021.
Centrepoint’s goal is to help vulnerable young people become independent enough to live a good life that they can thrive in. And we are open to all homeless young people, regardless of their geographical circumstances. Whether they’ve been kicked out of their family home in London or have travelled to the UK as an unaccompanied minor, we’re here to help.
Our legal team recently experienced a bittersweet victory: through years of hard work they managed to reclaim a huge backlog of benefits payments owed to a young person using Centrepoint’s services. A huge and monumental success, yes -but it certainly wasn’t an easy win.
Our legal team make up a vital part of the service we offer young people at Centrepoint. For those seeking legal support, it can be incredibly difficult to attain without financial aid, and so many often go without. Centrepoint is here to help change that. Nabila, a legal administrator coming to the end of a secondment with the Legal Team, tells us about what she has learnt during her time with the department and the important service they provide.
With over 600,000 shows and 62 million listeners, you could say podcasts are pretty popular - which is why we created our own. This National Podcasting Day, we’re taking a deep dive into one of our two fantastic Centrepoint podcasts, the youth-led Point Made.(Watch this space for the story of our mental health podcast, Centred.) Find out how we made it, why it was important, and discover the young people who helped make it such a passionate podcast.
As recipients of the lowest amount of Universal Credit, young people have been left struggling to make ends meet for decades. When the weekly £20 uplift is removed at the end of this month, many vulnerable young people will be forced to compromise between food, bills or rent – an impossible choice that will make it even harder for homeless young people to move forward with their lives.