If Members could leave quietly, please. We have not finished our business for today. 

Luke Fletcher to introduce the short debate. 

Thank you, Llywydd. I have agreed to give a minute of my time to Mabon ap Gwynfor, Siân Gwenllian and James Evans.

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

Homelessness is a multi-faceted issue and impossible to separate from wider social conditions. We often discuss the scale of the problem in this place and its many causes, be those wealth inequality, precarious and poor-quality housing—which, by the way, has a detrimental impact on physical and mental health outcomes—familial breakdown and so much more besides. To talk about homelessness in all its forms, from sofa surfing and street homelessness and rough-sleeping through to living in temporary accommodation, is to discuss inequalities and systemic failings throughout a range of areas and services in our society. And if the problem is multifaceted, the solution must also be multifaceted.

Now, when we put questions to the Welsh Government about youth homelessness, a typical response will almost always refer to the Government's commitment to ending all forms of homelessness. Of course, this is commendable; this is something that we can all get behind, something we can all support. But, as is often the case, young people are overlooked and are frequently institutionally failed.

It also sidesteps that fact that early intervention goes a very long way when tackling homelessness more broadly. I want to use this debate today to urge the Welsh Government to adopt a specific focus on youth homelessness from which to build a homelessness strategy tailored to the specific needs of young people, because half of all people who will experience homelessness in their lifetime first became homeless by the age of 21. By addressing the issue early on and at its roots, we can prevent the entrenchment of homelessness in people's lives and make it a rare, brief and nonrecurring experience. Youth homelessness often serves as a precursor to longer-term homelessness, and, because of their age, young people are facing unique barriers. For young people in work, earnings potentials are already limited. They are least likely to qualify for social housing. They comprise a significant portion of people in private rental sectors, a sector which has extracted massive rents from tenants and gone completely unchallenged over the last decade. And to add to that, those experiencing poor mental health, those who are care-experienced, those who are care leavers, LGBTQ+ young people, neurodivergent young people, as well as those excluded from school—all of them have been found to be at especially high risk of youth homelessness.

To illustrate the point, 33 per cent of care-experienced young people become homeless in the first two years after leaving care; 25 per cent of all single homeless people have been in care at some point in their lives, and 73 per cent of all people who are homeless living in Wales have been homeless more than once. Fundamentally, the only way to put an end to youth homelessness is to address the pressing issues Wales faces across a range of policy areas. It is not simply child poverty. It's not simply a lack of affordable housing. It's not simply a familial breakdown or adverse childhood experiences. It can be one or it can be all of these things in any combination that means a young person ultimately becomes homeless.

As I've already mentioned, there is no specific national plan or strategy for tackling youth homelessness. A national cross-departmental youth-orientated homelessness strategy aimed at finally eradicating youth homelessness and which acknowledges youth homelessness as a distinct societal issue requiring distinct solutions would go some way to eradicating homelessness in its entirety.

We have a vast repository of experience and expertise to draw on, and while it should be a source of shame that we're able to say that, it simultaneously provides us with a resource of hope and a vast amount of wealth that we can draw on in terms of knowledge and experience.

Consider the findings from the Upstream Cymru initiative, which builds on the success of an earlier Australian initiative. This school-based programme aims to identify risk factors for homelessness early on and provide support to those at risk. The Welsh pilot, operating in six schools across three local authorities, has demonstrated the success that early intervention models can have, and we have significant bodies of work already out there, vital documents like End Youth Homelessness Cymru's road map, which could be one of those documents that really could be the cornerstones of the Welsh Government's strategy to end youth homelessness.

So, to close, Dirprwy Lywydd, I return to my opening remarks: our aspiration as a Senedd should be to finally put an end to youth homelessness and to create the conditions so that, where homelessness occurs, it is a rare, brief and nonrecurrent experience. I hope that the Minister can agree today to commit to supporting the further implementation of Upstream Cymru, which has been so successful at identifying and targeting specialist services at those young people at risk of lapsing into homelessness. I would also very much welcome a commitment today to implement a youth homelessness strategy that takes and builds on the incredible work and ideas of coalitions such as End Youth Homelessness Cymru. Ultimately, what is the point of us even being here in this place if we aren't going to take the bold action, the necessary action, to tackle this issue?

Dirprwy Lywydd, I look forward to contributions from other Members to this debate and the response from the Cabinet Secretary.

Thank you, Luke, for bringing forward this debate this evening. I'm very pleased to hear Luke referring to Upstream Cymru, and I hope that the Cabinet Secretary will take notice of that, because when I was in discussions with people in the Finnish Government recently, that's exactly what they're doing in Finland, but on a huge scale. They're identifying the needs far ahead of time; they solve the issues before they arise, and ensure that people don't find themselves homeless to a great extent in Finland. So, the experience of Upstream Cymru is something that needs to be rolled out, and, of course, the experience of young people is different to the experiences of other people in Wales who find themselves homeless, and that's why we need to see the right to adequate housing as part of Government policy, to ensure that young people have access to education, to transport, to employment. So, if you'll refer to the right to adequate housing in your response, and when you're going to roll that out as a policy, I'd be very grateful. Thank you.

As you've both mentioned, preventative work from an early age is crucially important to prevent homelessness among young people. By collaborating on a cross-sectoral basis, we can identify those young people who are at risk way before they reach crisis point or before young people are threatened with homelessness. We've talked about Upstream Cymru, which is an excellent resource that identifies risk at an early stage and allows staff to put the appropriate intervention in place, be that in housing, family mediation or assistance with mental health problems. There is an annual survey held, which has been developed by Cardiff University, where school pupils can record their experiences, and that support can be provided at an early stage as a result.

Plaid Cymru has held the idea of community schools or family-focused schools at its heart for many years, because we do believe that schools should provide multi-agency services for families, with the teachers focusing, of course, on education. But this is the best way of closing the attainment gap, as well as the best way of identifying and overcoming problems that often lead to homelessness. Therefore, I do think that Upstream Cymru is an important step towards delivering the vision of the family-focused school, but we need far more of it happening across Wales. And this idea of a multi-agency school approach is necessary to support the most vulnerable in our society, including preventing homelessness.

I'd like to thank Luke Fletcher for bringing forward this really important debate today and it's just a shame to see there are not many more Members in the Chamber, actually, on this very, very important issue. You did mention in your speech, Luke, about care-experienced young people, and I think that's an area of youth homelessness that probably doesn't get the recognition that it actually deserves. A lot of care-experienced young people, one in four care-experienced children are homeless by the time they turn 18, and that's quite a shocking statistic for those young people across Wales. It does show that we are letting our care-experienced children across Wales down.

I know members of your own group sat on the committee that I did, the children and young people  committee, looking at radical reform of the system for care-experienced children across Wales, and radical reform 3 actually set out some recommendations as to how we could help care-experienced children who do become homeless. I think that's something that the Government really does need to take forward, how we look after that very specific group of young people who face very individual challenges, more so than other young people. I'd be very grateful if I could hear from you, Cabinet Secretary, what you are actually going to do to help those care-experienced young people who are at risk of homelessness and who do actually become homeless in Wales. More needs to be done in the area, because we are letting those young people down and that's a great shame for Wales that we are doing that.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Constitution and Cabinet Office to reply to the debate. Rebecca Evans.

Diolch. I'd like to thank Luke Fletcher for raising this very important matter this afternoon, but also all colleagues who have contributed to the debate. I want to reassure colleagues that preventing youth homelessness remains a priority for this Government as part of our long-term goal to end all forms of homelessness in Wales, as Luke Fletcher was referring to. As the then Cabinet Secretary for housing and local government has spoken about many times, if we're truly to prevent homelessness in all its forms, then it is about far more than just housing. I think that's been really recognised in the debate this afternoon, and it's very much about prevention, and partnership must happen very much earlier and also involve a full public service response.

Ensuring that young people have the best start in life and that they're equipped with the skills and the tools to succeed is a vital element of preventing future homelessness. We know that if a young person experiences homelessness they stand a far higher chance of repeat experiences of homelessness throughout their lives. We also know that many young people simply don't realise that they're homeless, and that the services who support them sometimes don't even recognise them as homeless either, and I think that that was recognised in the opening remarks in reference to sofa surfing, for example. That's why it's been so pleasing that, over the last five years in particular, we've seen a lot of buy-in and support of youth and education services in supporting and delivering on this important agenda.

Our ending homelessness action plan, which includes youth-focused housing and support actions, sets out our vision for a Wales where everybody has a safe home that meets their needs and supports a healthy, successful and prosperous life. We're committed to working together across the public and third sectors to prevent homelessness and, where it can't be prevented, to ensure that it is rare, brief and unrepeated.

In support of this, we're investing almost £220 million in homelessness prevention and support services this year alone, and this includes over £7 million specifically targeted at the early identification of youth homelessness and assistance to help young people develop the life skills to live independently. We recognise, however, that if we're to continue making positive changes to the lives of young people, then we all have to play our part, and that's why the proposed reforms in the White Paper on ending homelessness are ambitious and they do call for wider involvement of the public sector across Wales. The proposals are rooted within corporate parenting responsibilities and they hold huge potential to transform the experience of young people, and particularly care leavers experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

Although Wales isn't unique in the challenges we face, we have invested in approaches to prevent and relieve youth homelessness that are based on robust international evidence, taking a cross-Government and whole-system approach, looking at that example that was referred to in relation to Finland. To address the challenges, we have considered some of the system failures that could contribute to a young person falling through the gaps due to inadequate service delivery, both within or between services, and in doing so, we identified our youth engagement and progression framework as a proven example of how supporting both the school and the community setting can be better co-ordinated across a range of partners.

Through the framework, there's a focus on early identification, professional dialogue, multi-agency support and tracking progress. Where the framework works well, it represents a live data system, where both indicators of risk and professional observations are regularly combined to meet the needs of individual young people as they transition between services. One such key service is the youth service. By working with young people in safe spaces and through a relationship with a trusted adult, youth workers are afforded a greater insight into their lives and the specific challenges that many of them might face. This means that they're uniquely placed to help them understand and work through these challenges as part of their developmental journey.

Looking across both formal and informal education, we also know that school attendance can bolster key social protective factors against homelessness, through the building of resilience, social skills and positive social relationships. We also know that youth work is a key deliverer of these protective factors, extending beyond the school gate and into the wider community. It's for all of these reasons that we have invested from the homelessness prevention budget to build on the strong foundations where we have a proven ability to effect change.

So, in doing so, we've made £3.7 million a year available since 2019-20 for the youth support grant, as part of the wider investment into youth homelessness prevention, and that's to invest in youth work, engagement and progression, in addition to mental health and well-being support for young people, which is so essential to help them thrive. With this funding, we've worked with our local authority partners to ensure that a youth homelessness co-ordinator is based in the youth service of every local authority in Wales, and strengthened the way in which we identify and support young people at risk of homelessness from the earliest opportunity. These actions have raised awareness of youth homelessness and how to respond to it, and improved the co-ordination of services, so that the gaps between them are reduced and young people benefit from a more seamless offer of support.

We have continued to work across Government to ensure that the prevention of youth homelessness is now embedded in the refreshed youth engagement and progression framework, which was published in September 2022. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and the then Cabinet Secretary for Housing, Local Government and Planning were very clear that our commitment is to continue to develop, adapt and invest in the tools and systems that we already have, and that's why we published further guidance in November 2023, focusing on the early identification of people at risk of becoming not in education, employment or training, or becoming homeless. Running alongside this work has been a continued commitment to co-construction and collaboration, working closely with the sector and End Youth Homelessness Cymru, who officials meet with regularly.

As well as the work at the early preventative end with education and youth services, it’s also been pleasing to see the number of projects that have developed over the past five years as part of the youth homelessness innovation fund. Through our investment of £3.3 million, we have over 20 projects providing new and innovative housing and support approaches to young people across Wales, and this is a direct result of our investment in this fund. These projects are specific to vulnerable young people aged 16 to 25 who are at risk of becoming homeless or who are currently homeless. It would be remiss of me at this point not to mention the brilliant Tŷ Pride in Rhyl, which I visited fairly recently, and I was really impressed by both the staff there, but also the resilience and the determination of the young people who live there. As part of this work, in terms of the projects, there are four Housing First for Youth projects running across five local authorities in Wales. Based on the successful outcomes of the housing first model, we have adapted this approach to focus on the specific needs of young people, to ensure that they have access to the support and the services that they need to assist them on their journey towards independent living.

As a Government, we understand that ending youth homelessness is a concern of everyone involved in the lives of young people. So, I’d like to thank everybody who strives to make a difference and for their dedication and hard work in changing the lives of young people and providing hope for the future. And, again, I thank Luke Fletcher for bringing this debate forward today.

Thank you to the Cabinet Secretary and everyone else who contributed, and that brings today's proceedings to a close.

Have a good recess, everybody. I look forward to seeing you all back, sunny and shining, happy and smiling faces, in September.

The meeting ended at 18:57.