The Hidden Homeless - Teenagers with nowhere to go

Homeless teenagers in South Yorkshire have been telling us they've had to spend nights sleeping on park benches or on a friend's sofa because they had nowhere else to go.

Nationally one in five young people have sofa-surfed in the last year with a quarter not knowing where to go to get help.

A group of teenagers who used to be homeless have taken the brave decision to speak to our Chief Reporter Laura Pennington because they want others to know that there is help available:

Jenny Barnes is from Centrepoint which did the research:

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"The biggest single cause of youth homelessness is relationship breakdown with young people's families that either forces them to leave home or they feel they have to leave for their own safety. Research that we recently did showed that 58% of young people in homelessness services had encountered violence at home so they simply had no choice but to leave."

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One eighteen year old woman who spent six months sofa-surfing said:

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"Nobody knew I was homeless. You'd walk past me and you wouldn't ever think that I was homeless. But there's a lot of people out there who probably are, that nobody knows about who are struggling. They just need to find out about places to stay and places they can go.

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"If you get kicked out and you've got nowhere to go you don't know where anything is. I think that personally homeless shelters should advertise a lot more. I didn't know there was anywhere to go at first and I sofa-surfed for six months and there was probably no need for that if I'd known."

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She told us about how she made it work because she didn't have any money to pay her way:

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"When I lived with my friend I used to clean her mum's house for her. I used to clean up for her and then at the end of the day I knew I could stop there another night. That's how I did it."

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Lisa Rachieru's from Rush House a charity in Rotherham which can help accommodate up to forty seven young people.

She says part of the problem is that many teenagers simply don't know where to go to get help or that they need to go to the council to declare themselves homeless:

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"It's hard to really put a figure on it. There's quite a number who for whatever reason aren't aware of what services are available. At 16 how many young people would know to present to the local council? So quite a lot of our referalls initially start as a referral from the young person whereby they've found out about Rush House accidentally or through word of mouth because they're sofa-surfing or living with family and friends."

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All of the young people Hallam spoke to said they wouldn't come up in official figures because they didn't know to go to the council.

So even though the latest tables for this year so far show that there have been at least 80 aged between 16 and 24 who were described as 'priority need', it's thought the real number could be higher.

Lisa has told us that they're already working with Rotherham Borough Council to try and increase accuracy:

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"What we're looking at is single points of referral so that any young person who refers to us is directed to the right people to make sure that their homeless application is logged, that the local authority are aware that they're in housing need and that those statistics do start to get captured."

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Further research by Centerpoint also suggests the number of young people sleeping rough across the country could double over the next decade.

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"Through the day it's not too bad but through the night every little noise startles you. You get scared over any little thing. It could be a cat in the bins and you're scared thinking someone's going to come and get you. You're just paranoid."

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The following charities in South Yorkshire can support young people who are homeless: Rush House in Rotherham, Roundabout in Sheffield and Nomad's Smart Steps programme helps those between 18 and 35.

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