Wednesday 11 June 2008

More on 16/17 year olds

I have been told by a good source within my office that in the near future our management have decided that all 16/17 year old's who approach as homeless are going to be pushed towards accepting placement with young people projects or foyer projects. Apparently we are accepting too many young people as homeless. Of course the young people won't be given impartial advice. No one will tell them that if they accept and in a couple of years the projects don't have move on accommodation then they will be on there own having to find their own accommodation.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Presumably the managers know that any policy to deny all 16/17 year olds assistance via Part 7 would be unlawful?

Smoking Gun said...

Of course, but they won't refuse to to take an application, what they will say is by placing the young person with a foyer etc is that they have prevented homelessness

Anonymous said...

That is refusing to take an application - now if only the kids found a solicitor...

Ethan said...

Is that an offer NL??

Anonymous said...

I'm with smoking gun - it will be chalked up as 'prevention'.

A bit like the northern council that I used to work at - that became a beacon council for prevention work *cough splutter cough* for it's wonderful schemes such as mediation...

In a city with a population of 750,000, they had *at the time of the beacon award* ONE mediator... and the mediation offered THREE whole sessions - 1 with the young person, 1 with the parents (who never attended), 1 with all parties (who never attended)....

So not only were they doing the whole 'fobbing people off by sending them for mediation before they'd do a homeless investigation'....

If some poor soul actually would benefit from support work with the whole family - what's the likelihood 1 session was going to solve all family problems?
Or that there would actually be capacity with that *one* mediator.