Despite fine words, some young people still face homelessness when leaving state care

There are 90 young people, raised in the care of the Irish state, who are waiting for social housing from Dublin City Council and have priority status 

But last year, the council housed only six young people off that list. 

As well as the underlying desperate shortage of social homes, a barrier for those waiting is how various priorities are weighed.

Another priority list seems to move more quickly. There are currently eight households with welfare priority – meaning their current living conditions are exceptionally difficult, with domestic violence or extreme intimidation, say –  and 27 were housed from that list last year. 

Dublin City Council released the figures in response to questions raised by Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan.

A council spokesperson said both cohorts have top priority for homes, but the difference is that some with welfare priority joined the list a long time ago. 

“In general, these applicants will have a longer application date as a priority,” says a council spokesperson. 

Young people who turn 18 and leave state care are disadvantaged by a time-on-list waiting system for housing.

That is why state agencies have developed policies, protocols and strategies to account for that, and to try to prevent them from becoming homeless.

A Department of Housing protocol issued in June last year tells councils to find solutions for young people leaving care, so they don’t become homeless. 

But it is still up to councils to decide whether to prioritise care leavers for social housing, it says. 

“It's a postcode lottery,” says Terry Dignan, chair of the Children’s Residential and Aftercare Voluntary Association, an umbrella body for charities that run children’s homes. 

“Even if you have priority, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be housed,” he said.

So too says Gordon Hill, a senior manager at the charity Crosscare, overseeing its children’s residential care and aftercare services. 

Aftercare supports are certainly better for young people who stay in education, he said. 

But “for those with higher needs, those that are a bit more traumatised from their care experience, at risk of homelessness, that has not improved”, said Hill. 

Despite policies to try to stop it, Tusla will in practice push children’s homes to move on a young person when they hit 18 years old, because it desperately needs the bed back for another, younger child. 

Some of those who are pushed out have nowhere to turn but to homeless services, joining a growing cohort of nearly 1,500 homeless people in Dublin aged under 25. 

“You’re building the next generation of long-term homeless,” said Hill. 

A glimmer of hope is a new housing programme called Supported Housing for Youth, he said. But that is not specifically aimed at care leavers. 

Policy, protocol, practice

The Youth Homelessness Strategy 2022 to 2025 failed. 

The number of young people homeless in the Dublin region rose by around 50 percent across the three years, show Department of Housing figures.

In November 2022, 980 young adults aged 18 to 24 were homeless in Dublin. By December 2025, that figure had risen to 1,496. 

Care leavers are one of six groups of young people who are most vulnerable to becoming homeless, according to the strategy. 

Charities working with the homeless have long reported how many homeless people have a history of state care. However, this hasn’t been properly tracked. 

In March last year, Dublin City Council tightened up which care leavers could get housing priority, saying it would prioritise only those coming from residential care, and engaging in Tusla’s aftercare service, in order to target support where it was most needed. 

Then last summer, a joint protocol was issued by the Department of Housing and Tusla to clarify that councils have a responsibility to accommodate care leavers who are at risk of homelessness. 

“Housing Authorities should utilise all of the support options available to them so as to ensure that young people leaving State care do not become homeless,” says the protocol. 

But it also goes on to say that it is up to each council to decide whether to prioritise the young person for housing.

And when they are deemed to need social housing, “the provision of such social housing will be subject to availability and the operation of the relevant Housing Authorities' Allocations Scheme”, it says. 

Even with priority, young people could wait years for a home, living in homelessness in the meantime, said Dignan. 

Tusla is also signed up to the protocol, but when it comes to young people leaving state care and ending up homeless, the policy and practice don’t always align, say both Hill and Dignan. 

“The policy says we do not discharge people into homelessness,” says Hill. But in practice, if staff in a children’s home cannot find any other accommodation for a care leaver, Tusla will say it needs the placement for a child under 18, he says. 

Due to the crisis in placements, some transition housing for 17- to 19-year-olds has converted back to under-18s, say both Hill and Dignan. 

“They say no child can be discharged until they have an appropriate placement,” says Dignan. But Tusla managers have told him, he said, that homeless services are an appropriate placement.

Said Hill: “If a young person is engaging, it shouldn’t be possible to go from care to homelessness.” 

One step forward, two steps back

In 2019, as the housing crisis was deepening, advocates for care leavers called for safeguards to make sure young people didn’t leave state care and go straight into homeless services. 

Neil Forsyth, of the Irish Aftercare Network, said young people should remain in the care of the state until they could secure stable accommodation.

Dignan says that the same problem still exists. As housing supply tightens, there need to be more homes delivered specifically for care leavers, he said. 

Youth homelessness is increasing but there is still no clear data on whether more care leavers end up homeless. “Anecdotally, from what I’m seeing around our services, I wouldn’t say it's better,” says Hill. 

One problem, says Hill, is that the aftercare budget is not ringfenced. “There are probably fewer aftercare beds now than previously,” he says. “Because of the ongoing crisis in under-18s and Tusla being a chronically underfunded organisation.”

He points to the recent report by the Ombudsman for Children, which found Tusla was severely underfunded. 

“You could draw a direct line between decisions made in D-PER [the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform] and where some kids end up,” says Hill. 

Many unaccompanied minors – children who arrive in Ireland from overseas without guardians or parents – are at risk of homelessness now, he says. 

But the problem also predates a significant number of refugee children coming to Ireland, he said. 

“That issue of kids going from care to homelessness has been going on for a number of years,” says Hill. 

The Ombudsman for Children’s report also raises the concern “that not all care leavers are receiving appropriate aftercare support, and aftercare supports and services are not being provided to all young people who need them”.

For young people who remain in education, aftercare has improved. 

If no other accommodation is available, the state will often pay for student accommodation, says Hill. 

But then if the young person drops out of college, they could lose their accommodation too, he says. 

Some young people are excluded from aftercare because they came into care at 17, even if they have been known to Tusla for years, he says. In those cases, children’s home staff are still told to bring them to the council to register for homeless services, he says. 

 “When aftercare works it’s brilliant,” said Hill, “and when it doesn’t work it’s horrific.”