Prince William visits Homewards Northern Ireland to recognise homelessness support services for young people leaving care

Today Prince William visited Northern Ireland where he met with partners involved in the Homewards programme and heard about opportunities to scale local projects to help prevent homelessness for young people leaving care.

The Prince visited The Foyer, a temporary accommodation and support service for young people experiencing homelessness operated by Simon Community, a leading homelessness charity in Northern Ireland and member of the Homewards Northern Ireland local Coalition. Amongst its work, Simon Community delivers programmes aimed at preventing and ending homelessness for young people leaving care – a group that the Homewards Northern Ireland Coalition has identified as its initial priority group in the programme.

Research indicates that one third of people with care experience in the UK become homeless within the first two years of exiting the care system, whilst 25% of all people who have experienced homelessness have been in care at some point during their childhood.

Young people with lived experience of care can become homeless for many reasons including being unable to access affordable housing, the lack of a support network, and the impact of childhood trauma. In Northern Ireland, approximately 140 young people each year leave care and present as homeless. Although this is a minority of those leaving care, we need to better understand why this is happening, and what can be done to prevent it.

During his visit to The Foyer, The Prince met young people to hear about their individual journeys and to understand the support they have received. He also met leading practitioners to discuss some of the work currently being delivered in Northern Ireland to support young people leaving care, and the role Homewards can play in shining a light on what is working, expand and scale these support services, and develop new solutions.

Homewards Northern Ireland will look to catalyse and scale approaches like Simon Community’s Housing First For Youth service, which focuses on preventing homelessness, providing stable accommodation and community-based wraparound support to vulnerable young people leaving care for as long as they need.

With support from The Royal Foundation, Homewards Northern Ireland will deliver an innovative housing project focused on supporting young people leaving care. Innovative housing projects are being established in each of the six Homewards locations to test new ways to unlock homes at scale for those who are experiencing, or on the brink of experiencing homelessness.

Through this work and further initiatives, the Coalition aims to reduce the number of young people leaving care who experience homelessness, whilst also being able to share their learnings across the Homewards locations and beyond.