It’s been reported that almost 23,000 young people will face homelessness over the Christmas period. The country’s leading youth homelessness charity, Centrepoint, as found that one young person faces homelessness every 4 minutes, with hundreds calling the charity directly each year, due to reportedly being turned away by local authorities. As a result, Centrepoint has warned of the long-lasting psychological effect, with 71% of formerly homeless young people saying that homelessness worsened their mental health.
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00:00And we do know that roots out of homelessness are through having a job as well as a home.
00:08We often think that homelessness is just physically putting a roof over somebody's head, but it's
00:12important to tackle the emotional impact of homelessness. Around 71% of our young people
00:17surveyed by Centrepoint said that that process of being homeless worsened their mental health.
00:24We also work in some of our services, we work with young parents as well. So we're always
00:29mindful of that intergenerational risk of trauma being carried on down through further
00:35generations. What we do know is working with this age group is we can prevent some of the
00:39worst impacts carrying forward. And that's why I think it's really important that we
00:44support the young people as their motivation in general can be impacted, which is why my
00:50team and my colleagues in the therapeutic services that work with the mental health
00:54needs of our young people is so critical to help break that cycle and allow them to
01:00achieve their potential in the future. The research by Centrepoint also found that 25%
01:05of young people surveyed said they never felt cared for during Christmas before contacting
01:09the charity, with 20% of them saying they never felt safe at Christmas before finding
01:14support from Centrepoint. Yeah, a lot of people do associate Christmas
01:18with happy times, with family, with somewhere safe, good memories. But yeah, it almost emphasises
01:26for people that don't have that, what they're missing, what they don't have. So many people
01:30we speak to on the helpline say that they feel like no one cares about them, that no
01:35one is going to help them. And that has that impact on their mental health. So it has that
01:42sense that actually, why even try? Why even try and reach out to these places? But we
01:47can make a difference when people do contact us. We can offer that reassurance. It's not
01:52just about giving them directions. It's about talking it through, really listening to them
01:56and supporting them.