MSPs ask young Scots to share their experiences of homelessness

Youths who were once homeless have been invited to Holyrood to help MSPs learn from their experiences.

Young people who have experienced homelessness have been asked to give their views to the Equal Opportunities Committee.

The committee is looking for evidence of progress following its 2012 report Having and Keeping a Home: Steps to Preventing Homelessness Among Young People.

The report highlighted concerns such as the routine practice in some local authorities of treating some 16-year-old care leavers as homelessness.

Community care grants which help young people on low incomes move out of residential care should be in place the day a young person moves into their tenancy rather than months later, the committee said.

Equal Opportunities Committee convener Margaret McCulloch said: “Our hard-hitting report on youth homelessness in 2012 highlighted the number of young people who had been failed by a lack of support in overcoming inadequate life skills, compounded by substandard accommodation and isolation.

“While the report generated media headlines, we want to know whether it had any lasting impact.

“That is why two years on we are asking whether there has been an increase in support for vulnerable young people? Has there been a review of every local authority’s strategy to prevent youth homelessness?

“We hope that young people themselves will tell us whether any new approaches have been introduced and how effective they have been in addressing homelessness.”