Youth Unit > Recent Activity
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Practice Bites brief, innovative and replicable examples of youth housing practice
Find out what other youth housing / support projects are doing and contribute your own practice bites. Click here to access the Practice Bite database.
Click to access loads of content including the on-line version of Streets Ahead: the guide to leaving home and housing for young people in Scotland plus our on-line database of leaving home, housing education and tenancy sustainment resources. Just hit the 'search' button.
A Half-Day Information Sharing Seminar
Mediation can play a key role in a holistic approach to homelessness prevention. With
arguments in the family home a key trigger of youth homelessness, mediation is an
intervention that focuses on causes rather than simply responding to symptoms. This
half-day seminar will be an opportunity to share information about practice and will
include a range of presentations – including an extended session on evaluation – a
workshop session on promoting mediation services, and a panel discussion on key
issues facing Scottish homelessness mediation.
‘Stay or go?’ is a guide for parents to help them talk with young people about what is involved in leaving home. The guide provides up to date practical information about housing options, legal rights and sources of advice and support.
More Info: Stay or go? Young people living at home and leaving home: a guide for parents
My Space My Place, SCSHs innovative guide for young tenants, won a prestigious UK Housing Award for Outstanding achievement in social housing in Scotland in November 2006.
Every housing provider knows that young people often struggle to sustain their tenancies and that these struggles can lead to crisis and even homelessness.
The Scottish Council for Single Homeless' Tenancy Sustainment Resource for young people 'My Space, My Place' can play a valuable role in prevention work. By giving young people the advice and information they need in a form that they understand and respond to we can help them to keep their tenancies going.
The toolkit consists of a My Space My Place young persons guide plus an extra booklet for workers and a CD packed with useful content, including:
The national guide to leaving home and housing for young people in Scotland.
The Streets Ahead guide is an innovative resource addressing the issue of leaving home and housing. It has been warmly welcomed by young people and those working with them. Since its launch in October 2002, more than 30,000 guides have been sold and distributed throughout Scotland. A second edition was produced in November 2004.
The Streets Ahead guide looks at a range of leaving home and housing topics. Each topic is covered by a short, youth-friendly booklet, with the complete set of booklets packaged in a zip-up CD carry case. The guide helps young people consider their full range of options and raises their awareness of the support that is available It also introduces them to the challenges other young people have experienced in leaving home and living independently.
Online version of Streets Ahead
A survey and report from SCSH on rewarding the efforts of young people who are receiving housing support as they develop new skills and learning. Click the link for more details.
More Info: Rewards for Learning: Nurturing success in young people with housing issues
The second National Conference on Leaving Home and Housing Education took place on the 31st August 2007. The event featured workshops, stalls and presentations from SCSH, Shelter, Alone in London and many others. Delegates had the opportunity to discover new ways of delivering housing education including peer education programmes, drama and multi-media resources.
More Info: National Conference on Leaving Home & Housing Education
This combined report and toolkit provides a range of adaptable ideas, concrete materials and case studies that can be used in the monitoring and evaluation of work on leaving home and housing education.
A resource for teachers, youth workers, support workers, peer educators or anyone involved in working with young people and delivering any kind of leaving home and housing education.
Download free tools from the toolkit here including quizzes, baseline questionnaires and evaluation forms.
In November 2006 the SCSH home smart campaign coincided with a month of BBC programming on homelessness and high profile campaigning by other organisations to mark the 40th anniversary of the TV play Cathy Come Home. The aim of the campaign was to ensure every young person in S4 learned the key facts about homelessness and how to avoid it.
Click the link for SCSHs education project for S4 pupils and for coverage of the parliamentary debate on motion lodged by Linda Fabiani MSP.
In 2005-2006 SCSH undertook a series of interviews with projects providing housing support to young people. Our aim was to find out how these projects involved their service users. This small survey – encompassing 21 projects – gives a snapshot of both the different kinds of service user involvement activity and the extent of such activity across Scotland.
This report sets out a straightforward mapping tool – adapted from Arnstein’s well-known ladder of participation - for assessing the level of service user involvement in housing support projects and shows how those surveyed scored. Projects can also use this tool to assess the service user involvement taking place within their own organisation.
The SYHN Annual Homing In Conference offers a mix of topical issues for everyone concerned with young people’s housing and the prevention of homelessness. The conference also a has full-day session for young people to express their views on services in a range of creative ways.
More Info: Scottish Youth Housing Network Homing In Conference
Scottish Council for Single Homeless and Scottish Churches Housing Action have published a handbook, which sets out the practical steps in running starter packs schemes for homeless people. Starter packs provide basic household essentials such as kitchen goods, cleaning materials and bedding to people resettling in a new house after a period of homelessness.
Handbook editor Matt Elton of SCSH said: "We organised an information-sharing day for schemes throughout Scotland last year, and one of the things requested was a handbook. Make it practical and not too wordy, they said - and that's what we've done. We hope the handbook will encourage new schemes where there are none at present."
This A5 booklet is for foster carers, residential workers and anyone caring for a young person moving towards independence.
The booklet can be used as both a reference book for housing information and as a practical tool for talking to young people about preparing for and maintaining their own place when they eventually move on.
Before they have lived on their own for the first time, many young people have a very poor grasp of the realities of independent living. They’ve often no idea about rents, how much their bills will be, what their rights are and where to seek advice. The booklet is important simply because the better prepared a young person is before they move out of care, the lower the risk they will experience some form of housing crisis.
Produced by SCSH and Scottish Youth Housing Network. From the successful Tenancy Consultation Event held in Dundee 2004, the exciting and thought provoking ‘My Space My Place’ report shares thoughts, ideas, personal experiences and words of wisdom from around 70 different young people. This report gives a full account of the issues raised by young people, workers and facilitators who were involved and a glimpse of the methods of tenancy sustainment adopted by some of the projects who were represented at the events.
More Info: My Space My Place - tenancy sustainment report |
A half day training session took place on the 6th September which provided an overview of the recent Scottish Council for Single Homeless reports on Rewards for Learning and Service User Involvement. A range of activities were used to help delegates assess and review how they recognise learning in young people and how they involve service users. |
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The youth unit has been working closely with Glasgow Homelessness Partnership (GHP) to develop a Youth Housing Advice and Information Strategy. GHP commissioned SCSH to produce a short booklet on leaving home and housing. SCSH consulted with young people in Glasgow to produce a booklet that would be useful and accessible. The new strategy and the booklet - My Space My Place Glasgow - was launched on Tuesday 29th August. If you'd like to commission SCSH to produce written material and/or undertake consultation with young people on housing + information and advice issues, please get in touch. |
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