Oral-The Welsh Assembly Government’s Response to the Social Justice and Regeneration Committee’s Report: Review of Youth Homelessness

 As Members know, tackling homelessness has been a high priority for the Assembly Government, so I enthusiastically welcome this report and the opportunity to discuss in Plenary what we are doing to tackle youth homelessness in Wales. I put on record my appreciation of the hard work put in by present and past members of the Social Justice and Regeneration Committee in collecting the evidence and presenting the findings.
The recommendations contained in the report fit closely with our current policy direction and I am pleased to be able to accept unequivocally the majority of them. Some require further consideration but I support the intent of the proposed action and believe that steps should be taken to achieve the intended outcome.
Having such unity of views on what needs to be done to deliver our national homelessness strategy in Wales in respect of youth is essential if we are to achieve these common objectives. We can now take our strategy forward on the basis of a common understanding of the issues and difficulties that young people face.
In accepting the recommendations, I am pleased to be able to indicate that work on implementing many of them is progressing as expected in our strategy. The issue of youth homelessness has always been central to our policy in this area. Our focus is on tackling homelessness through prevention wherever possible. Therefore, it might be helpful to set the recommendations and my response in the context of our policies on promoting social justice and social inclusion for young people.
Our programme for improving public services in Wales, ‘Making the Connections—Delivering Beyond Boundaries’, sets out our direction for improving services that are citizen focused and joined up across local and service boundaries. We are consulting on guidance for the new children and young persons plans, which will be central to the planning of services for young people across the range of service areas, including housing. This will provide the local planning framework to enable joined-up service delivery to improve the prevention of homelessness among young people. Through these mechanisms we will expect local authorities and partners to develop local policy in line with our national policy framework.
Tackling social exclusion among young people is central to our mission to create a better Wales. We describe this across the range of our policy documents, including the national service framework for children and young people, and the new social services paper, ‘Fulfilled Lives, Supported Communities’. Through Extending Entitlement, we are supporting local joint working to meet the housing and other needs of young people, and to involve them in local planning.
We are reviewing our policy on the provision of services for care leavers and aim to strengthen the support for the resettlement of this group. In particular, our programme for eradicating child poverty demonstrates our commitment to putting this issue high on our agenda. We recognise that youth homelessness is too often associated with a range of indicators associated with deprivation, and we need to break the intergenerational cycle of disadvantage.
We cannot achieve our objectives on poverty and social exclusion alone. The Assembly Government needs to work with the UK Government, local government and the private and voluntary sectors, if we are to succeed in achieving our goals. This is reflected in the report, and many of its recommendations require other organisations that are beyond our control to take significant steps, but we will work with them to improve the direction and effectiveness of our national resources to tackle youth homelessness.
Through our national homelessness strategy, we are already devoting substantial resources to preventing youth homelessness, which includes projects to educate young people in how to avoid homelessness, youth prevention outreach and advice work, the development of a toolkit for youth workers, and mediation to help young people maintain family support. We have commissioned a substantial piece of research into the most effective models of housing for vulnerable young people, which will be completed this autumn. Funding for Supporting People enables hundreds of young people to be supported in the community, so that they can eventually sustain independent living. However, there is much more to do. My ultimate aim is to ensure that every young person lives in a secure and supportive home environment. That would provide a firm foundation for eliminating social exclusion and deprivation, and for enabling our young people to achieve their potential in life.
We will continue to review the effectiveness of our national homelessness strategy in helping to prevent homelessness among young people. This report, and the evidence presented during its preparation, will provide crucial information to assist us in that process. I thank the committee again for its support in tackling this agenda.