Good hygiene has never been more important. But for the homeless, hygiene is a complicated issue. When you have no roof over your head, let alone access to warm running water, those cleanliness practices can be a challenge. This not only poses a risk to physical wellbeing, but can also affect mental health. Thankfully, hygiene kits for homeless people can make all the difference.
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 our former engagement team begin to reintroduce events and outings that aim to inspire and empower as the HOMES Activities Team, we caught up with them after a residential outing to Staffordshire, which brought together homeless young people from services all over the country for some daring outdoor activities. Here, the team tell us what these trips mean to young people, and just how it helps them prepare for independence.
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.
Everyone should have a place they can call home. And yet, our research shows the number of homeless young people keeps growing. Many factors can feed into youth homelessness, but access to housing is a big one – and addressing these barriers to secure long-term accommodation is key.
Earlier this month our patron, The Prince of Wales, officially opened our new housing development in Peckham, South London, providing 33 new flats for young people between 18-25.
Across Centrepoint’s services, almost one in five young people were reported as being ready to move on but unable to do so, with a third of these having been ready to move on for longer than six months. This report seeks to identify the key barriers faced by young people looking to move on, in order to understand what needs to be done to help homeless young people ready to take the next step and move into stable longer term accommodation.
For the past five decades Centrepoint has supported homeless young people to turn their lives around. In 2019, no young person should find themselves homeless yet we are supporting more young people than ever through our accommodation services and national Helpline.
Specialist lender, Together, are working with Centrepoint to fund our innovative Independent Living Programme.
The Homewards initiative will test ideas and models to end homelessness in six locations across the UK, supported by our Patron, Prince William.
