Home Smart
The final item of business is a members' business debate on motion S2M-5079, in the name of Linda Fabiani, on the home smart campaign.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes the home smart campaign by the Scottish Council for Single Homeless (SCSH) and its aim of ensuring that school leavers understand the issues surrounding homelessness and how to avoid it; commends those schools in the Central Scotland region which have committed themselves to participate; values the contribution made by organisations like SCSH in tackling homelessness, and calls for a renewed effort to end homelessness.
It is a mark of how important the subject is that members have agreed to bring the debate forward by an hour. I declare an interest, as a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Housing. That membership exists from the days before I was elected, when I worked in housing associations. I have experience of dealing with homelessness applications from a service provider's point of view, as well as from a politician's. I think that I speak for most housing professionals when I say that there was always a particular poignancy when a young person presented as homeless—I felt helpless and that I could not be of real assistance to them.
My experience has given me a perspective on the issue that underpins my belief in the absolute necessity of tackling homelessness and seeking to eliminate it as far as is humanly possible. Part of that task is the provision of suitable and affordable housing, including owner-occupied and social rented housing. We all know that that is an issue in many areas. In East Kilbride, where I live, it is a particular problem. A major part of the task must also be helping people to avoid homelessness in the first place. That is the main thrust of the home smart campaign, which seeks to ensure that every fourth-year pupil in our schools knows that help and advice is available.
Great credit should be given to the Scottish Council for Single Homeless for creating the campaign. Its importance is underlined by the statistics on youth homelessness. In 2005-06, 19,400 young people between the ages of 16 and 24 turned to their local authority because they had nowhere safe and secure to stay. That is a rise of almost 4,000 since 1999. If we consider the figures for 16 and 17-year-olds, in 2005-06 more than 4,300 young people turned to their local authority. While few fourth-year pupils are likely to think that homelessness will affect them personally, the figures tell a different story.
There is a significant, worsening problem with youth homelessness that we owe it to Scotland's youngsters to address. With 3 per cent of young people in Scotland reporting as homeless each year, we cannot afford to turn away and hope that the problem resolves itself. We should be grateful to the Scottish Council for Single Homeless for the work that it has been doing and we should embrace the home smart campaign as an extremely worthwhile endeavour.
The council's idea for the campaign is simple, but appears to offer the right kind of help. Rather than waiting until the young person strikes out on their own, obtains a tenancy, then fails to maintain it and ends up homeless, it has taken the sensible step of taking the message into schools. The information in learning packs allows teachers and pupils to consider the issues that often arise with tenancies and young people, and to consider how they might avoid the pitfalls that have befallen so many in the past. As well as facilitating discussion, the packs offer sensible advice, including, for example, advice about how to ensure that the behaviour of one's friends does not affect one's tenancy. That seems fairly straightforward to those of us sitting here, but one of the major problems that young tenants have is in controlling their home environment and not letting it turn into a community centre for their friends.
I wish to make it clear, though, that the campaign is not an entirely new venture for the Scottish Council for Single Homeless. The I'm offski! learning materials were first produced in 1988 and have won awards. However, home smart goes even further. The experience of the organisation over many years is illustrated by its developing and innovatory campaigns. It will soon produce an evaluation toolkit to measure the success of the campaign—I am sure that it will be very successful. Getting pupils to think about the issues while they are still in the fourth year of secondary school will ensure that the information is embedded and that they know that support and advice is available.
Targeting the campaign at fourth years is important—I believe that it is the optimum age group to target. It is the age group that is perhaps desperate to leave home for negative reasons. It is an age group that may have a rose-tinted view of how one can strike out on one's own and be a success. Many young people who are at a stage in their lives when they should be building for the future can struggle to find the resources just to survive. Surviving day by day instead of planning for their future leaves them vulnerable to all sorts of outside influences. Home smart is about trying to stop that happening.
It is hard to judge how many pupils have so far been exposed to the materials produced by the council, but around a third of our mainstream schools have indicated a strong interest. That points towards a possible 20,000 pupils. I make particular mention of John Ogilvie High School and Strathaven Academy, schools in central Scotland that I know well for their openness to new ideas and that have responded positively to the Scottish Council for Single Homeless.
Understandably, the member is mostly focused on central region, but is she aware that the interest of schools in home smart goes far beyond it? Indeed, a primary school in my constituency—Balnacraig school in Perth—has won a prize in the competition. Does she agree that that school should also be commended?
Absolutely. I am happy to commend Balnacraig school in Perth. That underlines the fact that the campaign is national.
As I said, every mainstream school has received a pack, and any special needs and residential schools that have expressed an interest have received one, too.
I congratulate and commend the Scottish Council for Single Homeless for the work of home smart. I also want to thank Lovell, the housing developer that has sponsored the campaign and provided the prize for the recent draw. If the campaign has ensured that pupils know that there are people and organisations to which they can turn for help, and if it has encouraged those pupils to think about the issues and appreciate the challenges and difficulties that leaving home presents, the campaign is worthy of congratulation and encouragement. As I said earlier, more than a third of all homeless applications are from people between the ages of 16 and 24.
Scotland's politicians should be working towards ending the scourge of homelessness. Each of us in the chamber should be humbled that the problem has still not been turned around eight years after devolution, despite the good intentions of us all. That perhaps indicates a need for more positive action on the part of Scotland's politicians, a more proactive agenda on youth homelessness and a greater encouragement of the work done by organisations such as the Scottish Council for Single Homeless.
No vote is taken at the end of members' business, but I am confident that the general mood of Parliament today will be to agree with my motion.
I congratulate Linda Fabiani on securing this important debate.
I want to start by discussing a bit of background. As we all know, the documentary "Cathy Come Home" had its 40th anniversary in December. Because of that, the Scottish Council for Single Homeless—which I will call SCSH from now on—launched a campaign to raise awareness of homelessness among teenagers and teachers.
In 2006, one in 28 of the entire 16 and 17-year-old age group in Scotland presented to their local authority because they had nowhere safe and secure to stay. As Linda Fabiani said, the SCSH sent each secondary school a home smart teachers' pack with advice on how to avoid homelessness and on where to seek help. I signed up as an official supporter of the plan.
Let us consider a few facts. Astonishingly, there are currently 87,000 empty homes across Scotland. The average house price has nearly doubled in the past six years. The home smart campaign promotes financial literacy and a knowledge of civic structures.
Research by Heriot-Watt University has revealed that 31 per cent of young households are forced to buy smaller accommodation than they need—for example, buying a one-bedroom house when they have children. The research also revealed that 7 per cent of those people would need housing benefit to support even a tenancy. That clearly demonstrates the need to make young people aware of what kind of housing to expect.
Many young people are not aware of what is involved in living independently. As Linda Fabiani explained, they may not know about bills, utilities and food costs. It is obviously a sensible policy to explain what is involved and to ensure that young people are fully aware.
With such a high level of young people finding themselves homeless, it is important to make clear what living away from home will mean. Education is the clearest way to improve society and help to send children on a better way. It is important that we do not fail children through a lack of appropriate education and training.
I think that we would all agree that the level of homelessness is unacceptable and that it must be addressed urgently. The Conservatives have put forward an empty-homes strategy that will enable housing associations to build more social housing and will help the private rented sector. Through the removal of ring fencing, we would also allow local authorities to dedicate more money to new schemes in their areas should they wish to do so.
In my past life, I had the privilege of being employed by Scottish Water. Scottish Water is often blamed for problems, but it is important that more be done to develop brownfield sites and uninhabitable housing. Development constraints caused by organisations such as Scottish Water must also be addressed, because there is a massive hold-up.
I do not wish to politicise this debate, but I support the housing stock transfer programme, which would ensure that social housing was better managed and maintained. Unfortunately, the policy has been hopelessly mismanaged by the Executive and shamefully misrepresented by Linda Fabiani's party and by the socialists.
I wish the home smart campaign well. I hope and pray that we will see an early conclusion to this blight on our society.
I add my congratulations to those that have already been offered to Linda Fabiani on raising this important debate. I also congratulate the Scottish Council for Single Homeless on its home smart campaign.
From a previous existence—many moons ago in 1988—I remember the I'm offski! campaign, which was, I think, the first attempt to get schools to engage young people in education on housing. In my time at Shelter, we tried hard to ensure that housing education was part of the curriculum. I look back on those days and wish that the Government of the day had taken Shelter, the SCSH and other organisations up on that because there has been an explosion in youth homelessness since 1988. Advice such as was contained in I'm offski! and which is provided by the home smart campaign is just the sort of information that young people need so that they can avoid the pitfall of becoming homeless. Avoiding that pitfall is more difficult for them today than it was in 1988. There are greater pressures not just on young people, but on local authorities—which have to deal with more homelessness applications and longer general waiting lists for housing—than there were in 1988.
I turn to the problem of the number of young people who leave care and become homeless. There are many reasons—some of which Linda Fabiani mentioned—why they might not be able to sustain tenancies once they are given them. For example, they might allow their house or flat to become a community centre. As well as wanting schools to take up the home smart campaign, I would like the Executive to commit to introducing it to young people who leave care, wherever they may be, as part of its programme of education for that group. It is a tool that the Executive should use. There is a need for part of the campaign to be targeted at young people in care because they are the most vulnerable young people.
I want the home smart campaign to be rolled out throughout Scotland. At the moment, it is for individual schools and teachers to decide whether to embrace the campaign, but it would be extremely useful if the minister and the Executive gave guidance to local authorities to the effect that it is an excellent example of a campaign that should be embraced. This week, the Executive has rightly agreed to the showing in schools throughout Scotland of the Al Gore film on climate change. That is an important move of which I am highly supportive, but the youngsters who become homeless on leaving school and home have great needs, so although I welcome the commitment to show the Al Gore film, I would like the minister to consider the possibility of issuing guidance to schools and local authorities to ensure that campaigns such as the SCSH's home smart campaign are introduced.
I will finish on a wee sour note. The home smart campaign has been funded by the Scottish Council for Single Homeless, which is a registered charity, and by Lovell House Developments Limited, but it would have been nice if such an important initiative had been supported with Executive money. The Executive has failed to provide money, so I would like the minister to offer some Executive muscle to ensure that the campaign is encouraged in schools—the future of our young people depends on its success.
For many years, I have had a high regard for the Scottish Council for Single Homeless and an interest in its activities. Yet again, it has rung the right bell. Linda Fabiani is to be congratulated on highlighting the home smart campaign.
The first aspect that I want to cover is the teaching of young people in school. The packs that have been mentioned, but which I have not seen, sound interesting and I am sure that they will do a lot of good. However, there is more that we could do to focus teaching in school on real issues; for example, we could teach about finances, money, rent and how to budget for a household. That would make mathematics and arithmetic more concrete for many young people, who struggle with the theoretical side.
We could get people to plan their lives by thinking about a range of things—not just housing. People could be set tasks such as getting from Grangemouth to Kilmarnock by bus. They would be provided with a set of timetables and asked, as an intellectual problem, to find the best route. If someone can do a task like that, their achievement is worth several highers—it is more than most citizens can do. There is also the question of comprehension. People could be given some of the more idiotic public documents to read and if they could understand them, their achievement would count as several highers.
We should relate school teaching much more to real life, of which housing is a major aspect. I am thinking in particular of finances and debt. We have debated debt in the past and we know the importance of having an understanding of finances. Our schools could teach finances much better than is the case in many instances at present.
We could also teach human activities—things such as concern for our neighbours. A year or two ago, I suffered personally as the result of a change in ownership of the flat above mine. The resulting deterioration in the quality of life of my wife and me was astounding. The ill effect that a neighbour can have on his neighbours is appalling, so young people could be taught to have concern for their neighbours. They could learn that, although they think it is okay to have a noisy party at 2 am, it is not okay for their neighbours.
There are also things that could be done outside school. I discussed the issue with my wife, who has a background in housing, and she said that while many students live in shared flats, there has been a decrease in the number of young people who are not students who share flats. That may be a contributory factor to the number of young people who are homeless—the minister may have some figures on that. It might be a subjective impression and not the true situation but it would, nonetheless, be interesting to follow up on it.
Work that is done well in some parts of the country but could be developed in other parts includes the giving of advice and support to young people: I am thinking of physical support as well as personal mentoring. There are good organisations that provide furnishings and so forth—the things that are important when people are starting out in a flat for the first time—but advice giving is important and inadequately funded. Previous speakers mentioned that.
Several members attended a meeting that Barnardo's organised to inform us of a good scheme that it offers to young people in care. Those who come out of care have a big problem in sorting out their lives and their housing and we could improve many aspects of that situation. The work that the SCSH is doing, including the home smart campaign, as Linda Fabiani highlighted, is important. We should support it and try to get it spread throughout the country.
I congratulate my colleague Linda Fabiani on securing the debate. She gave us the figures on homelessness, to which we should add the number of young people who are—to use the slang—sofa surfing. Many young people who are doing that do not consider themselves to be homeless despite the fact that they have no legal entitlement to stay where they are staying. I say to Donald Gorrie that my anecdotal experience is that many young people are continuing to live in shared tenancies even into their 30s. They are doing so for want of somewhere to stay; they have not moved on from a student lifestyle.
It can seem to be terribly glamorous to have a place of one's own and to have independence but, as we all know, home ownership is very different from that and even older people can find the responsibilities of home ownership difficult. We need to learn a bit about it before we do it.
I will tell the tale of two young women whom I met not so long ago. At 16, a young person can discharge himself or herself from foster care—he or she can make the choice to stay on or move out. One of the young women decided to stay on voluntarily past 16 with her foster parents. She wanted a bit of independence, but still to have the support of the foster family, just as many young people do when they decide to stay on at home.
The other young woman decided at 16 that she wanted to go out into the big wide world and get her own flat. She was allocated a flat in Selkirk, but what happened was exactly as colleagues have described. Her flat became a place for parties and became known as somewhere that everyone could go. The young woman did not know how to gatekeep her flat—I think that that is the term, but Donald Gorrie will correct me if not. She did not know how to say no to people and she thought that she was popular. Within a very short time, the young woman found that she was pregnant. She sat in front of me—she was a lovely young girl and very bright—and said, "I've gone and got myself into the same situation that my mother was in. I never wanted to be in this situation. I wish I'd done what my friend did and stayed with my foster parents, but I thought I knew better." We were all like that at 16—we all thought that we knew better—but the consequences were much more severe for her.
Of course, if a young person in a tenancy has such problems, they can get the dreaded antisocial behaviour order and could lose their tenancy. They then become voluntarily homeless and are on the slippery slope. Homeless people have no anchor. If they are asked where they live, they have to admit that they have no address—they lose their identities and become homeless people. Where we live, as well as what we do in life, constitutes much of what we are.
I will contribute to the debate another suggestion for the minister. I have not shared it with my housing colleagues, so I might get a rap on the knuckles for it. There used to be a scheme called the golden landlady. I was told about it 20 or 30 years ago—there is nothing new in life. Donald Gorrie talked about learning to do housekeeping at school. We did that in primary 3 and 4 with Miss Murray—I think that was her name—many years ago. It will all come round again.
The golden landlady scheme involved a woman who was on benefits because she was unemployed, for example, being able to take on a tenant who was older than 16 and had been in foster care. The landlady was paid, but her benefits were not affected. Such a scheme seems to me to be worth investigating. I have only thrown the minister a vague clue, but he is very able—I know that he is actually Des McMuscle—so he will be able to sort it out. It seems to me to be a sensible suggestion. The landladies were experienced; they had brought up families and were the salt of the earth. That was exactly what the young women and young men required, because they got a feeling of independence but still had the security of knowing that they were going back to somewhere. I ask the minister to consider the golden landlady suggestion.
Like others, I congratulate Linda Fabiani on securing the debate. I am old enough to remember watching "Cathy Come Home" and remember the furore that it caused. If Linda Fabiani saw it when it originally came out, she must have done so from her pram.
The debate has been interesting. We have had "sofa surfing" from Christine Grahame, and Donald Gorrie has suggested that people should be taught about finance. I hope that the debate results in some development of the theme of homelessness and how to tackle it, because that is one of the things for which the Parliament is known in Scotland and internationally.
Members might recall that, when I was the Deputy Minister for Social Justice, I took the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Bill through the Parliament. Four years on, we have major challenges to deal with, but there is a consensus in the Parliament about trying to tackle them. I remember Shelter organising a demonstration about what a dreadful bill the Homelessness etc (Scotland) Bill was. Perhaps that organisation has changed its tune, which is interesting.
I am happy to join Linda Fabiani in welcoming the home smart campaign as an example of the work that needs to be done to prevent homelessness—especially youth homelessness, as she points out. It is important to emphasise prevention whenever possible so that the misery of homelessness is avoided for individuals and families but also because it makes sound economic sense to do so.
In some circumstances, as perhaps exemplified in "Cathy Come Home", the prevention of homelessness may involve providing intensive support. For example, we may need to deal with the problems of a family that is struggling to cope. That also applies to vulnerable young people, and the fact that we have educational information for young people who are at risk of slipping into homelessness is an important and effective dimension of a preventive strategy. I realise that, in such circumstances, the costs that are associated with material of that kind and other preventive measures can represent value for money, especially when we set the costs of providing them against the costs of failure, which can fall heavily on local government and other Government agencies.
We all know that homelessness is linked to poor health and poor educational and employment outcomes, which can all lead to personal misery and further calls on public resources. Homelessness is a trigger for family breakdown and disruption and other stresses, including health and educational stresses, which accentuate problems and make them more difficult to resolve. If we are trying to do things for vulnerable people, tackling homelessness is an important dimension of that.
The Scottish Executive recently established an innovation fund to explore new ways of preventing homelessness and repeat homelessness. The fund currently supports eight projects, including anger management, sporting opportunities for women, support for survivors of domestic abuse and employment opportunities for young people who have left care and are in their first tenancy. We are robustly monitoring and evaluating those projects to ensure that the lessons that are learned can be applied throughout Scotland. We have also commissioned broader research from Heriot-Watt University.
I am interested to hear about the innovation fund. Is there any money left in the fund so that, if other organisations have a good idea such as the home smart campaign, they can tap into the available funds, which might allow the widest possible distribution of their material?
We can consider that in the context of monitoring and evaluation. Homelessness is not going to cease to be a problem, so we will always need to consider preventive measures and assess which are most effective.
We have commissioned broader research from Heriot-Watt University to identify and categorise existing preventive activity, to explore the views of various stakeholders on the different approaches to prevention, to identify what prevention activities work best for particular at-risk groups and to make recommendations on monitoring and evaluation. We hope that that will feed into good-practice guidance on preventing homelessness, which we will be working on with the awareness-raising and best-practice sub-group of the homelessness monitoring group as we try to take forward what seem to be the best methods.
I certainly do not wish to knock anything that the minister has been saying, but I want to put something on record. All those things are admirable and different people are doing a lot of different things. However, there is a great danger, which I have seen over the years, that the approach can get a bit highfalutin and that we can sometimes miss the very basics. I go back to the sort of thing that Donald Gorrie was talking about. I have never forgotten what a young lad on the access project in Motherwell said to me. He had come from local authority care, he had gone into a flat and he had ended up homeless. He said to me, "You know, they gave me a house, but they didnae tell me how to work it." It is that basic when it comes to youth homelessness. We must consider long-term outcomes, as it will take more than a year for a lad like that to get it right. We should stop looking at the outputs from all the various projects—as admirable as they are—which sometimes go above people's heads, and instead start looking at the very basics and the long-term outcomes.
I take from Linda Fabiani's motion a commendation for those schools throughout Scotland that have become involved in the home smart campaign and in similar work to ensure that young people making the transition to adulthood and independent living are fully aware of the risks of homelessness, of their housing options and, as Linda Fabiani suggests, of the basics of living on their own. The research that I have mentioned indicates that many local authorities are already operating programmes such as home smart and that its kind of materials are being used in schools up and down Scotland—with other authorities preparing to use them. I warmly welcome that.
To take up Tricia Marwick's point, I can investigate whether we require guidance and whether ideas are getting taken through the process. Certainly, the evidence that I have is that the materials are being used widely.
The focus on young people is particularly important, as has been suggested. The principle of early intervention suggests that it is best to equip people who are setting out on their adult life with the information and skills that they need to avoid future homelessness. There must be particularly robust arrangements for children leaving local authority care. Many of them face the prospect of entirely independent living at a very young age, with less opportunity of back-up from family or friends than might be available to people in different circumstances.
That is why the recent report on improving educational outcomes for looked-after children and young people, which was published earlier this week, emphasises the need to improve the provision of dedicated supported accommodation for young care leavers, the role of research and inspection in ensuring that each young person leaving care has appropriate accommodation and the need to ensure that they are educated about how to live on their own.
We need to identify who is at an increased risk of homelessness and who requires help to be capable of living on their own and provide the appropriate assistance. That needs to be done, in the first instance, by local authorities and organisations that are equipped to deliver those kinds of things and the Executive is anxious to provide support to ensure that that happens.
Over the past three or four years, we have made significant progress on the prevention and tackling of homelessness in Scotland. We know that our target for 2012—which is that every unintentionally homeless person should be entitled to permanent accommodation—is challenging. However, we are making progress. During 2005, we consulted extensively in order to inform the ministerial statement on the abolition of priority need, which was published in December of that year. It set out the interim objectives to be reached as we move towards 2012. Along with the original blueprint that was set out by the task force, that demonstrates our commitment to doing everything that we can to end the blight of homelessness.
Today's debate has focused particularly on educational requirements and the needs of vulnerable young people, which is an important issue that, perhaps, broadens the debate about how we can deal with the problems of homelessness in a rounded-out way.
Meeting closed at 16:26.