Peer Mentoring Project Launched With NI Youth Forum for Young Homeless

Pictured L-R are Peer Mentoring Project Apprentice, Saoirse McEvoy, the Housing Executive’s Caroline Connor, Peer mentoring Project Apprentice, Blair Anderson,  the Northern Ireland Youth Forum’s Amanda  Stewart and the Department for Communities’ Avril Hiles.
Pictured L-R are Peer Mentoring Project Apprentice, Saoirse McEvoy, the Housing Executive’s Caroline Connor, Peer mentoring Project Apprentice, Blair Anderson, the Northern Ireland Youth Forum’s Amanda Stewart and the Department for Communities’ Avril Hiles.

For anyone who has encountered homelessness or been threatened with losing their home, it can be quite daunting and stressful.  So imagine what it could be like for teenagers or young adults who have yet to experience independence, emotionally or financially.

The Housing Executive has been working closely with the Northern Ireland Youth Forum (NIYF) to identify pathways into homelessness and look at measures which may have prevented them from becoming homeless.

Young service users – young people who have experienced becoming homeless – were taking part in the Youth Forum’s Relentless Change Programme and took up the challenge to highlight what it is like to be young and homeless.  They responded by producing the ‘Pinball’ video, which told their personal stories and made recommendations to the statutory agencies which might have improved their experiences.

One of the recommendations was that young people may have benefitted from some form of peer support.

The Department for Communities asked the Housing Executive to look at new ways of working to improve service delivery, and a successful bid of funding to the Department was granted to employ two apprentices to support other young people that may be threatened with homelessness.

Funding for this new peer mentoring project is secured for five years and will be delivered by NIYF.  The peer mentoring was launched at the Housing Executive’s conference in Derry~Londonderry last week as one of the outcomes from its second annual report on the Homelessness Strategy 2017-22: Ending Homelessness Together.

Amanda Stewart, Project Leader with NIYF, said:

“We are really excited about this new opportunity.  It can be extremely daunting for a young person with little or no experience of housing matters to be faced with homelessness.  If we can find a way to make that journey easier, then this project will be really worthwhile.

“It is also wonderful for two young people that have experienced homelessness to be able to share that experience to improve the lives of others”. 

The apprentices, Saoirse McEvoy and Blair Anderson, will work to improve online information to make it more accessible to young people.  They will also target people in youth clubs, schools, etc to highlight homeless triggers and encourage anyone that may be in difficulty to seek help.

Avril Hiles, from the Department for Communities, was also at the launch, and said:

“The Department is delighted to fund this new peer initiative and deliver on one of the recommendations coming from young service users.  Who better to support our younger generation that their peers?

“I hope the project will help raise awareness of homelessness among the younger population and importantly, work to prevent young people finding themselves in a homeless situation.  I wish the apprentices Saoirse and Blair all the best in their new role.”

Caroline Connor, Assistant Director, Housing Executive, commented:

“The Housing Executive is committed to ensuring that our customers have the opportunity to shape service delivery.  

“We have listened to the young people and responded by providing them with an opportunity to create a new approach to addressing youth homelessness.”