{"id":369350,"date":"2025-08-24T08:40:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-24T08:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369350\/"},"modified":"2025-08-24T08:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-24T08:40:13","slug":"children-are-losing-hope-theyll-ever-find-a-home-of-their-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/369350\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Children are losing hope they\u2019ll ever find a home of their own\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

A homeless<\/a> charity has said Stormont must do more to help thousands of children starting school next week without a stable home life. <\/p>\n

Kirsten Hewitt is Director of Homelessness Service with the Simon Community, and spoke to the Irish News as new figures showed that homelessness has more than doubled in the last decade.<\/a><\/p>\n

In June, there were 49,000 households waiting for social housing in Northern Ireland of which over 32,000 were classed as homeless \u2013 up 136% from the 2015 figure of 13,644.<\/p>\n

In Belfast City Council, this also passed the threshold of 10,000 households for the first time.<\/p>\n

\"10,000<\/a>\"Remembering<\/a><\/p>\n

Ms Hewitt said the figures don\u2019t include \u2018hidden homeless,\u2019 which the Simon Community estimate as being an extra 25,000 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing homeless is a traumatic experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be young people in Northern Ireland living in temporary accommodation who are going to have to go to school next week.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo to wake up in that space, which has so much uncertainty and where you feel fairly hopeless and isolated, to go to school is a significant challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KirstenKirsten Hewitt, Director of Homelessness Services with the Simon Community. <\/p>\n

She said children not having a space to do homework, living near their school or being able to invite friends over for dinner was especially difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are things kids look forward to in summer holidays which is really challenging. When you\u2019re in that space, a child loses hope that they\u2019ll never find a home of their own.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said the mental health challenge of temporary accommodation also included many struggling with issues like depression, anxiety and schizophrenia.<\/p>\n

Ms Hewitt said the risk of homelessness was also increasing, with a job loss or rent increase often enough to push families into crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating, because this is an escalating problem that we need our government to help us do something about,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need more social housing, we need our departments to work together to identify people at risk of homelessness and help prevent that from happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving a home is just so important, it\u2019s the starting block for so many things. The social support, the education and employment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Hewitt said a source of hope was that someone\u2019s homeless journey still ends every day.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor that person, their family and the relationships around them, it has ended. The potential that person has then grows and continues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe statistics are grim, but there are real people behind them. So if we can help them on their journey, that\u2019s why we do what we\u2019re doing. <\/p>\n

\u201cBecause, ultimately, we can only end homelessness in Northern Ireland if we work together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A homeless charity has said Stormont must do more to help thousands of children starting school next week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":369351,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[13975,6332,1144,129238,13977,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-369350","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-health-and-wellbeing","9":"tag-homelessness","10":"tag-northern-ireland","11":"tag-simon-community","12":"tag-social-housing","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115082849593237101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369350\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/369351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}