Dear Prime Minister,
Welcome to Westminster.
For forty years the Cardinal Hume Centre has worked alongside young people, children and families facing homelessness. Last year, just a short walk from Downing Street, the Centre worked with over 900 families and 350 children and young people. We witness how the right support, provided at the right time can prevent a crisis shaping a lifetime.
We’re glad you want to restore hope in politics and have also committed to putting care at the heart of everything you do. We’re excited that your first intervention as proof was to reinvigorate and extend the government’s commitment on rough sleeping.
Your new ambition to end, not simply reduce, rough sleeping in the country is rightly celebrated across the housing sector. As our new Prime Minister, you now have the opportunity to tackle the whole system that drives homelessness, rather than just the isolated most visible parts.
This matters because rough sleeping has not returned to pre-pandemic levels through a lack of effort from homelessness agencies. It has risen because still too many people continue to fall through a fragmented and overstretched system long before they reach the street.
At the Cardinal Hume Centre, we see that every day. We meet the teenager fleeing violence at home, the pregnant mother sleeping on friends' sofas or travelling the tube for warmth, and the child leaving school to meet her parents at Victoria Station to discover which hotel they will sleep in that night. Their homelessness may be less visible than someone sleeping rough, but it is no less damaging.
In just three years, the number of households experiencing homelessness in London and living in temporary accommodation has increased by a third. Across England, 85,000 families – including more than 170,000 children – are impacted, the highest number since records began. Even in Westminster, your new home, with all its wealth, around 4,000 children are homeless, significantly more than the adults counted sleeping on its streets.
These experiences risk shaping a lifetime. Homelessness in childhood can shape health, wellbeing and educational outcomes for years to come. It can increase the likelihood of involvement with social care and the criminal justice system. Perhaps most tragically, it increases the risk of repeated homelessness in adulthood. In one study of rough sleepers with the most complex needs, 85% experienced childhood trauma, 40% ran away at some point as a child, and almost one-third left home before the age of 18.
It all adds up, and it shows you cannot tackle homelessness by addressing only its most acute and visible form. The rise in rough sleeping has increased at a time when our youth, health and criminal justice systems have each faced their own crises. As housing costs have risen and the supply of homes has fallen, more people have lost not just a home, but also the stability and support that prevent an ongoing crisis.
If you are looking for a circuit breaker on homelessness and rough sleeping, we believe it starts here: Be serious about ending homelessness earlier and remove its ability to shape children’s lives. That means investing in families before the crisis becomes entrenched.
It should mean matching diligence on the systemic causes of homelessness with equal diligence for the people caught in the grip of that broken system. So yes, tackle the lack of housing, a welfare system that still puts barriers in the way of work, and a health service in need of reform.
But match that with accessible support for families and children who too often fall through the gaps between disconnected services. Housing, employment, education and family support should not operate in separate silos when the challenges people face never do. People's lives do not work like that, and neither should the support they receive. This is our model at the Cardinal Hume Centre, and we can demonstrate its effectiveness.
The right solution will involve the construction of more affordable homes – which is of course essential, but so is a little of that care that you promised to put at the heart of your decision making. Get that right and you won't only significantly increase your chances of keeping your promise on rough sleeping, you will also change the trajectory of thousands of lives.
So, as you settle into your new home in Downing Street, we would be delighted to welcome you to the Cardinal Hume Centre, just a short walk away. Come and meet some of the young people in our accommodation, the children and families using our family centre, and the parents and young people looking for training, education or work. You can also meet, our accredited teams, who advocate for people whose futures too often depend on systems that do not work together.
Come and see how protecting more children and young people today can help your government solve homelessness tomorrow.
With our very best wishes,
George O’Neill
Chief Executive, Cardinal Hume Centre
