Chloe O'Toole, Tyler Morrison and Mileni Lopes Seidi - just three of more than 100 young people affected by homelessness whose lives have been turned around by the Relentless Change Programme, run by the Northern Ireland Youth Forum, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and supported by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, Extern and Ulster University

Published: 05:23 Thursday 05 December 2019

More than 100 young people affected by homelessness have rebuilt their lives thanks to a major project run by the Northern Ireland Youth Forum.

The Relentless Change Programme, funded by The National Lottery Community Fund has had a real impact on the lives of these young people, helping them to find permanent accommodation, employment and connection to vital statutory services.

The RCP Programme is supported by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive, Extern and Ulster University.

This has been achieved largely through The Youth Forums Relentless Youth Work Approach with the young people establishing transformational relationships and completing personal and social development and experiential learning courses to help them deal with the challenges and pressures of homelessness.

On top of that 18 young people have completed a work placement this year and 41 have completed an accredited Ulster University course on civic empowerment. A further 15 are registered to take part in the course in April.

On November 26 at the Northern Ireland Youth Forum, programme participants, staff and partner agencies came together to celebrate their successes on the programme over the last year.

In the second year of this three-year programme, more than 40 young homeless people engaged with the RCP project.

As a result of their work, they continued to present key messages which they feel would make life easier for other young people in the same situation.

These are:

Access to correct information from NIHE at the right time; Dont put young people in hostels with older people or in B&Bs; Family Intervention at the right time could help prevent homelessness.

Social services need to do more to help support young people leaving care; An advice service for youth homelessness that is flexible and provides out of hours support; Young people need more choices in relation to housing options; Services and decision makers to listen and learn from young people; More education in schools and youth clubs about homelessness.

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Young people rebuild lives thanks to project - Belfast Newsletter