Homeless helpline: Youth advice charity joins Centrepoint freephone for young people

Homeless helpline: Volunteers and staff from The Mix will be working with the Centrepoint team to help young people
Matt Writtle
Matt Watts5 December 2016

The UK’s leading youth advisory charity today joined forces with Centrepoint’s Young and Homeless Helpline to enable the service to provide a “groundbreaking” level of support to callers.

The Mix, which provides help to people under 25 facing issues such as drug dependency, mental health problems or family breakdown, will work with Centrepoint to ensure that callers to the helpline will receive the right help at the right time.

The helpline will for the first time give young homeless people, and those at risk of ending up on the streets, a national Freephone number to ring to speak to an adviser who can link them to the services they need.

The two charities will share a call centre space and work together to answer phones. Callers will be passed between the services depending on the type of support they need.

Homeless helpline: The Freephone will support young homeless people
Matt Writtle

The Mix warns it has seen a rise in the number of people seeking help with homelessness.

In the past year it has received more than 2,000 calls requesting housing help.

Over the same period 154,000 young people from across the UK, including 52,593 young Londoners, accessed content about homelessness on its website, with a 15 per cent rise since July.

Both organisations hailed the collaboration as a crucial step to ensure the success of the helpline.

Chris Martin, chief executive of The Mix, said: “Two trusted brands such as us and Centrepoint working together will be able to better help the vulnerable young people who contact us.

"We will be able to make it easier for under-25s to get the best advice as early as possible to help them on the range of issues affecting them.”

Charity partnership: Tess, left, from The Mix and Grace from Centrepoint will be working together on the helpline
Matt Writtle

Through the helpline, Centrepoint will provide early-intervention housing support.

The Mix will offer advice and counselling on topics including bullying, debt, drink, drugs and mental and sexual health which can be the trigger for people ending up homeless.

Its website services are visited by two million young people a year, 1.1 million of them from London, including 520,960 aged under 25.

Gaia Marcus, overseeing the Centrepoint helpline team, said: “While our experts can help people on their housing journey, The Mix can help people on their wider personal journey. This will be groundbreaking.

"Young people experiencing homelessness often have very complex needs. When they call they will now be able to get access to a range of support.

"We will not only help them with their urgent need to find a safe place to live, but be able to provide advice on what could be the root causes of their homelessness.”

The charities say the helpline, which it is hoped will launch in February, will fill a gap in local authority support.

Cuts to youth services nationwide are estimated at £387 million over the past six years.

There is growing pressure on homelessness services amid spending cuts and the housing crisis, particularly in London.

Up to a third of more than 150,000 young people who seek homelessness support from local authorities in the UK each year are sent away with little or no advice.

The charities sharing office space and other costs will mean more can be invested in the Centrepoint programmes to which people using its helpline will be referred.

The Mix will also help roll out live web chat, SMS and other digital aspects of the service. BT has agreed to provide the helpline’s phone service for free for the first three years.

The Evening Standard's Homeless Helpline appeal is raising money for the Centrepoint Helpline, a brand new support service that will save young people from ending up on the streets.

To donate please visit our Just Giving page.

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