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FAILURE TO SUPPORT young people as they leave state care and residential care units is leading to care leavers ending up in youth homeless shelters.
Homelessness has become a major crisis for Ireland, as more than 10,000 people sleep rough on the streets, in emergency accommodation and even in their cars throughout the country.
The concern for teenagers in residential care centres is particularly worrying as they do not have foster parents who can keep them in their home when they reach 18 years of age.
Instead, many are told to leave their residential care centres and find other accommodation. As they are considered adults at 18, those living in residential care centres are forced to find a new place to live and as the housing crisis deepens, many face homelessness.
Wayne Dignam of the Care Leavers Network said children leaving residential care are “more at risk” as a result of not having a foster family to fall back on.
He said they face “huge pressures of trying to find somewhere to get accommodation and support from aftercare workers”.
Aftercare
The child and family agency, TUSLA, has designed an aftercare package to assist with this transition into independence for care leavers. Important parts of this include the allocation of an aftercare worker and assistance with finding accommodation.
But both of these key elements are delayed in a lot of cases, further exacerbating the numbers of homeless people as a result, according to Focus Ireland advocacy manager, Roughan MacNamara.
“The reality is that Focus Ireland aftercare services in North Dublin are aware of a waiting list of 35 young people for an aftercare worker and 14 young people are on a waiting list for our residential services,” he said.
He added, “in South Dublin there are 32 young people who are on a waiting list for a Focus Ireland aftercare worker. In addition to that there are over 40 young people seeking a place in our Greenhill’s Court aftercare residential service.”.
This is just a snapshot of the problem representing a worrying trend as figures over the past four years have shown the number of homeless people between the ages of 18 and 24 in Ireland has more than doubled.
In June 2014, the number of 18 to 24-year-olds registered as homeless in Ireland came in at 418. In February 2018, however, that figure jumped to 938.
MacNamara said the number of care leavers in this age bracket is “over-represented in homeless services” as well as in the “hidden homeless or those who are sleeping on sofas and the like”.
The reality is that young people can be protected with aftercare support. However, if there is no aftercare support young people often become homeless and their lives can spin out of control – sadly sometimes ending in tragedy.
In school and in a shelter
One young woman who experienced this phenomenon of homelessness after care is Danielle McGarry (22) from Dublin. No stranger to homelessness, Danielle found herself living in a shelter at just 15 years old.
After a foster care placement broke down she sought help from her local garda station.
“I walked up to Stepaside Garda Station,” she recalls, “and I told them I had nowhere to go, that I was kicked out and told them my name and who I was”.
“I was waiting there for about six hours for the on call social worker. They came and had a bit of a chat and asked what happened. They knew that I was in care”.
After meeting with social workers Danielle was placed in LeFroy House, a homeless shelter for 12- to 18-year-olds along Dublin’s Eden Quay. She spent several months in this unit while trying to keep up with school.
“The only place they could offer was LeFroy House – it is night by night and I was there for a few months. I was out at eight in the morning and back by eight at night to secure a bed. I was there for a couple of months. I was still in school at this stage.
“I was only after finishing my junior cert. I wanted to go on, I wanted to try and get my leaving cert. I was going in every day in the same tracksuit.
“I didn’t have any spare clothes but I had the tracksuit that I had on my back. In LeFroy House they were able to give me pyjamas at night and wash my tracksuit for me.
I was a child and I was homeless at 15.
Battling school with life in a homeless shelter proved difficult for Danielle, who eventually left school and spent her days wandering around the local shopping centres.
“When I was going in every day in the same tracksuit I was getting bullied for having no uniform. It was just embarrassing at the time.”
“And there were other people living in the shelter who were into drugs so I was trying to keep my head down and keep myself to myself,” she says of her time in the homeless unit. “Thank God I didn’t get into drugs”.
“At the age of 15 I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t getting income from anywhere. You got €3 a day pocket money from the Lefroy House and they paid for your bus ticket to get in and out of school. I spent days then just walking around shopping centres on my own.”
When a social worker found a place in a residential centre for Danielle she hoped to leave the homeless period of her life in the past. However, after almost two years in the residential centre she was told she would be leaving because she was nearing her 18th birthday.
Within a few months, she was forced out of the care system and into aftercare which brought fear and worry about where she would end up.
“Some residential units keep young people if they’re in education for another year or two. Because I wasn’t in education I was told I had to leave and that my time was up.”
“I had to try and find private rented accommodation. I remember going to so many viewings,” she says.
Charities and organisations such as Focus Ireland and Don Bosco provide aftercare services for care leavers. This service includes offering assistance with finding accommodation and employment. Demand for these services have increased, however, as the numbers of youth homeless continue to rise.
Danielle had little contact with her aftercare worker when she left the residential care unit.
“I didn’t have an aftercare solution to fall back on,” she says. “So I had to go through the homelessness system. I was 18 at the time”.
“My aftercare worker didn’t meet with me that much. When you’re after being in care and you have all these people looking after you your whole life, but the second you turn 18 you have to leave… you’re not an adult and nobody knows what to do.”
St Catherine’s Foyer youth homeless unit for 18 to 24 year olds in Dublin became home to Danielle months after this. The worrying thing she says, was that the unit was “full of people that had left the care system”.
She estimates almost 90% of those staying at the unit were care leavers. A spokesperson for the Peter McVerry Trust which runs St Catherine’s Foyer confirmed that more than 50% of beds at any given time are being allocated to care leavers.
Francis Doherty said care leavers were joining these “extremely long queues” in the search for accommodation. He said the “lack of aftercare supports” was having a severe effect on the lives of these young men and women.
A spokesperson for TUSLA said it was committed to supporting children in aftercare and a number of additional supports including accommodation were “in development”.
In a statement, TUSLA said “the [aftercare] service offered will be determined based on each young person’s assessment of need. The aftercare service is mainly an adult service which is dependent on the cooperation and participation” of the care leaver.
A spokesperson also confirmed TUSLA was increasing staff levels to deal with the pressures on aftercare services at present.
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Sad to read Danielle’s story, also sad her parents or either of their families couldn’t help this young lady in any way.
@Mary D: Nice diversioery comment, It’s a state failure.
@Genius 80s+: so she’s an orphan, no parents, no family of any kind, grandparents (on either side), uncles, aunts?? Bit of a weird one don’t you think?
One question- if these children and young people are not a TUSLA priority, how can anyone in that sector justify their salary?
@EvieXVI: because the social realm has been reduced to individualism, where we are thought in collages to tunnel vision on the person at hand and fail to take into account the social context in which they place.
It says “I care about the person while under my care, but couldn’t give a rats about them when they move on from my responsibility” – continuous pass-the-bucket.
Many social workers / care workers are happy to operate within the parameters of their defined duites under apparatus of the State because they have been conditioned to practice that way, and don’t see advocating for social justice as part of their duty to care. This to me is a failure of care, going as far to call it negligence.
The problem is these professionals lobby only to challenge minuscule issues within their system, and not challenging the ACTUAL system – which is flawed to the core.
Housing is one of the biggest issues facing young people leaving state care, and yet no social worker / care worker will take a stand and refuse to move young people onto HAP. They refuse to advocate for a more secure tenancy than what is offered in the current private market. HAP is not meeting people’s housing needs, it’s leaving them highly vunerable to these market forces, and care leavers will always be priced out of the market mainly because of age and lack of yet established progression through careers/education.
As young people with no family safely net, it’s unacceptable that they are allowed to become entrenched in homelessness through no fault of their own, this is structural inequality that needs confronting; because, let’s face it, the State have been neglecting these young people for years – are we to continue to wait around for promised appropriate interventions that will never come?
What’s happening here is a running down of services to demise faith in public opperations of institutions to give way to unchallenged privatisation – watch this space (unfortunately).
@Aisling Bruen: no family at all? Nobody? Not an aunt, uncle…nobody? Is this everyone leaving State care?
@GerryCummins: ….. is this actually all you took from that? You absolute tosser.
Leo Varadkar and Fine Gael are destroying our country.
Please:
Don’t stand idly by.
Do the honourable thing.
Shaft them at the nest election before they shaft you.
@Jimmy Coltrane:
destroying our country? no fianna fail did that
@Jimmy Coltrane: As any Irishman will say, unfortunately, theres nothing I can do as I’m Still trying to remove the Splinters from me arse since the last election..!
@Jimmy Coltrane: we don’t have anyone to vote in,they are all the same
@Just Some Guy: FG were in opposition. They knew.
Sad and shocking to hear this practice of abandonment of kids in care who come of age still continues some 32 years after I experienced the same thing. At 3 I entered care and at 18/19 was turfed out with little or no support or understanding of the real world. If it was not for someone I still call my guardian to this day, I’ve no doubt I would not have survived my 20′s, no drugs, no criminality , just no support either by a family network and certainly not by the state who put me in care in the first place.
@Joseph Dempsey: I assume the State didn’t put you in care just because they felt like it!
@GerryCummins: charming response , the type one would expect from a clearly uneducated bored Saturday even troll. I’m unsure of the exact reasons, one didn’t enquire at the age of 3 but I’m sure the 13 brothers and sisters I never met might have some answers. The state may have had a responsibility, however said responsibility was passed on to religious orders who couldn’t quite grasped the concept.
This is terrible in a country which the government claims is the best growing economy in the EU 3 yrs in a row,where are the taxes going,if there is not enough then we need help from the EU on humanatarian grounds,instead of spending taxes on a unwanted EU army.
Firstly, why is there no reprocussions for the parents who threw their child out of home?
There is no mention of this! Why blame the state for parents who are not able or willing to do their job?
People are quick to blame state agencies, but we need to as a society acknowledge that it is parents/families/community letting young people down. Where were her extended family? People in her community?
@Blah blah: the parent’s are incapable is the answer I think ,it could be drug’s or a miriad or reason’s but you basic reasoning is right ,some of these parent’s can’t look after themselves
@Blah blah: what???? Your dumb questions fits your name perfecfly; blah blah blah. You have no idea about anything of these kids in care; why they are there or how they got there. The fact remains that these kids are there; and we have tax payer funded agencies not doing the jobs they are paid to do. BTW, these agencies are part of the community.
@Blah blah: and no Grandparents, aunts or uncles to take them in???
@Ron O’Keefe: so Ron, where are the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles from both sides of the family, not one could lend a hand!
‘And the Irish government opened Ireland up to vulture funds when I was doing my communion’
That’s just brutal… not bad enough to be in care in the first place, but then you’re turfed out at 18?! No skills, a basic education and little support Recipe for a continued hard life.
@Lynne Anthony: and not a family member from either side in sight! From either side! Amazing!
We need to have military conscription introduced so people understand the welfare of the country comes first .
Everyone who enters Leinster house in the next 4 months can lead off
I’m sure the Army have socks in different colours , Goldie Varadker . .
@Ken Hayden: Pink for him, red for yer man with the double-barreled surname and his pals, green for FF, yellow for SF, and blue.
Who will we put in blue??
@Ken Hayden: why would he need different coloured socks??? Is he different to everyone-else.???
@Mairtin Antaine O Conaill: Yes he is , he has us in this position .
And if you don’t think him showing his different socks when he goes on official visits is a cause for ridicule in relation to a Goldie Hawn analogy , well then get a life .
If our Taoiseach thinks more of his public image than solving the actual problems , then he deserves ridicule .
By the way , I’d make the same comment about Edna Kenny .
@Mairtin Antaine O Conaill: Did you think I was having a go at him for being gay ? You’re wrong , I couldn’t care less about his sexual orientation .
It’s the path he’s steering this country down that I care about . Make no mistake about that .
If he’s not a family man , like Merkel is not a family woman , well I could have a different conversation with you if you want , because the majority of people who pay taxes and struggle in this country are trying to raise families , it’s how this country kept going for milenia .
@Ken Hayden: so Ken, how would you do things differently?? Apart from the socks obviously.
@Andrew Dillon: As I’m not a politician or economist , nor am i anywhere near their pay grade , my ideas would be more on the Nationalistic side of things .
No free housing or welfare for non Irish citizens , if we have citizens in the E.U who are on welfare , we’ll pay for them .
Get rid of Hap , as it only inflates market rents .
Build more social housing , with rent tied to 25% of household income .
Refuse residency to people who have not payed tax for 5 years straight , or 5 out of the last 7 years .
Peg politicians salaries to twice the average wage , expenses rigidly checked .
Remove the office of President , as it’s a waste of funds .
And dig my heels in about the interest on our National debt .
And if all the Multi nationals leave Ireland , so be it .
@Ken Hayden: So free housing for all and no jobs,that’ll work just fine
@Owen: So 28 Million a month free social welfare for landlords, tax free profits for Vulture Funds, Banks debts paid, Developers debts paid, and they name their price for social welfare payments, banks allowed steal people’s money, the destruction of the public health service, the privatisation of some elements of it that has seen women needlessly die, the privatisation of public services, the deliberate destruction of the water infrastructure that sees a country awash with rain unable to supply people’s water needs, the refusal to build social housing, the driving up of house prices to benefit the few, zero hour and or minimum wage contracts that pays for nothing, not rent, nor food.
All that’s working fine is it?
@Owen: Here never said free housing. No one did, or ever has. Why do people like yourself constantly babble on about free houses? What free houses? Where is this mythical land of free houses?
@Ken Hayden: you do know others are working on things when the head of Government is out and about, he doesn’t do it all himself you know!
If you read a dickens book and how it explores the living conditions of the day, has anything changed ,thing’s have gone up a little without doubt but there is still people living at a very poor level .In general we leave thing’s like those mentioned to the state ,saying well we pay our taxes and it’s up to the powers that be to do the right thing after all I am working for my family and I have bills to pay .Then we look and see the druggies and say it’s there own fault and lump a group of struggling people in with them ,I know druggies is a harsh way to describe people but realistically that’s the perception.I honestly don’t think that we have the people capable of solving these problem’s in the front line
More Fine Gael fiascos.
@Eileen O’Sullivan: At least our national debt is going down in relation to our GDP , unfortunately , we haven’t paid a cent off it and it’s going up by about E315 a second .
https://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/debtclock/ireland
@Ken Hayden:
It seems silly to leave paying down national debt until interest rates go up
when we will be paying more interest.
@Moorooka Mick: Like i said above , I’m no economist , especially at 3 am .
But we seem to have such a huge GDP , but are unable to put a dent in our National debt , somethings not right .
I was in care at the age of 6. Moved from foster homes to foster homes for 2 years then placed into a children’s home at 8 years old in blanch. Then moved at 10 to another kids home on Collins ave at 12. Looked like a normal house with 12 kids living there. Lived there till I was 13. I left because of abuse. No social worker would help. I became homeless at 13. Going to the police station every night at 7pm waiting for a social worker to come. Sometimes they didn’t come till 3 or 4am to see if they had a bed if they didn’t they would give you food and leave to go onto the next kid in the next police station. Few night’s I was put into parkview house on the north circular road a kind of b&b for homeless kids but they had some people that stayed for 6 to 12 months at a time. Finally after months I got a place there for 12 months. Loved it staff were lovely. After a year and half I was put into lefroy house. I was to stay there till I was 18. Couldn’t settle there. Even with my bad health I left nearly 2 years later and back to parkview.
The problem is that even if the court takes you from your parents you can leave care whenever you want they don’t care as long as you don’t go back to that family home. You can be homeless at 13 like me and they don’t care. Places like parkview house is really needed. Parkview helped me even after my 18th for as long as I needed it. It’s no longer there but their is a need for more b&b for kid’s. Because children’s home’s just aren’t safe. People don’t think that they will come across a 13 year old living on the street because they left the care home they were in because of abuse. I’m turning 29 and it still feels like it was yesterday and after having people “care” for you your whole life to having no one is horrible. It may sound weird and people can’t understand it when I say I was happier when I was homeless why? Because I had people around that cared and wanted to talk and help compared to now living on my own and having no one. Unless you’ve gone through it you can’t understand it. Places like Tulsa will never be able to get it right because they don’t have enough social workers or care staff in these homes. Foster families have come a long way they are now keeping kids longer sometimes till the kids turn 18 which is amazing but places like parkview need to come back. It takes teens off the street even just for the night.
@casey: If you need an advocate you can contact EPIC on (01) 872 7661 or info@epiconline.ie We provide free, independent advocacy and information for people with care experience.
Some people should not have children if they cannot support them even after they fly the coup. We all need support whether it be in our youth or when we run into difficulties in adulthood.
@Hugh Boyle: People can’t see into the future. If they could, no one would have children.
These unwanted children should be properly cared for they should be well educated at a early age in a residential colleges with all the services support that they require so that they will become valued citizen if we are a caring society we need to start a proper system very soon the citizen of Ireland should demand proper rights for these Irish child citizens after all when we are gone we need good people to take over not like the shower thats in power at the moment.
Man in Waterford gets punch and dies. Please throw the book the people have spoken
I feel for kids with disabilities in care. Those who turn 18 and will never live independently fall between the cracks. Tulsa do not have to care for them and Adult disability services are very slow to take over their care. These kids should be the very ones to be cared for and plans made fir their futures. Pull out your fingers and give these kids the chances they deserve.
We all know that this country is run by money & idiots. If you don’t have any money & not willing to lick up to the idiots then you have had it.
If you’ve been affected by issues raised in this article you can contact EPIC on (01) 872 7661 or info@epiconline.ie We provide free, independent advocacy and information for people with care experience.
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