Housing help for people leaving care

Leaving care is a challenging and important transition into adulthood. The success or failure of this transition will have great impact on the outcomes throughout early adulthood and into the rest of the life of a young person leaving care. Ensuring care leavers have suitable accommodation is essential to this and needs to be recognised as much more than just finding a place to live.

Care leavers should be informed at an early stage about all options available to them and the advantages and disadvantages of each option. Whilst also thinking about their own wishes, aspirations and what support they need to succeed. To live independently requires a variety of skills, support and resources. Depending on earlier experiences, care leavers are likely to have had varying levels of opportunity to develop such skills.

Care leavers generally assume responsibility for their own accommodation at a much younger age than their peers and are likely to make mistakes and require support from others to learn from experiences. This learning journey will be longer for some than others.