In England, half of the teachers work with kids who are homeless.

The devastating effects of homelessness on children’s education are demonstrated in our recent research by YouGov on behalf of Shelter. We discovered that 59 % of English teachers work with students who are homeless or have recently become homeless.

A child should not live in temporary housing.

Many families with homeless children reside in “temporary housing,” which can include hostels or beds and breakfasts. This is rarely temporary and is frequently cramped, damp, and in need of repair, according to ground-breaking research from Shelter that was published earlier this year.

That’s what we discovered:

• In temporary housing, four out of ten residents claim to have had issues with damp, mold, or condensation.
• Insect or animal infestations have affected more than one third of people, and dangerous risks like faulty electricity have been present in one in five cases.
• Families typically only need to share one or two rooms, and one in three parents of school-age kids claim that their kids do n’t have a bed of their own.

The study also demonstrated how homelessness can seriously disrupt children’s lives. Many people must leave a comfortable and friendly school. One in five families with school-age children claim to have had to move their child to a different school more than once.

Families may be accommodated far from their former residence, which results in lengthy, challenging journeys, waits for new school locations, and frequent relocations. This may imply that many kids do n’t get the opportunity to learn. More than half of school-age children missed days of class, and one in three of them missed more than a month of classes because they were homeless and staying in temporary housing.

The impact this is having in classrooms is demonstrated by current research.

Our most recent study delves even more deeply into the tragic effects of the housing crisis on kids and their larger lives. According to our research, of the teachers who have worked with kids going without a place to live in the past year,:

• 91 % of respondents claim that children arrive at school exhausted as a result of their housing situation because sharing beds and being crammed into cramped quarters make it difficult to sleep.
• 83 % of respondents claim that due to a lack of space in their accommodations, kids have n’t been able to finish their homework.
• 87 % of respondents claim that kids have come to school hungry. Temporary lodgings like B&amp, Bs, and hostels frequently have very little to no kitchen facilities.
• 91 % of respondents claim that the living conditions of children had a negative impact on the mental health of the students at their school. 81 % of respondents said it had a negative effect on their physical health.

How did we arrive here? By not making enough investments in social homes, successive governments have been unable to address the ongoing and worsening housing crisis for years. Families have no other choice but to rent privately. However, family home rents have skyrocketed and outpaced incomes, eliminating all options for many people.

What can you do, then, to put an end to the housing crisis?

It is not inevitable that there will be a record number of homeless children. It denotes that the government’s housing policy has failed. We can alter this.

The most significant gift you give this Christmas may be your assistance. Please contribute if you can to our urgent appeal. &nbsp, If we all band together to advocate for investment in social homes, that is the only way to permanently put an end to the housing crisis. However, in the interim, we want to be there to help the thousands of people who are homeless, including families whose kids are in danger of losing their temporary housing. Because it’s terrifying to experience homelessness alone as a parent and no one should go through it alone.

Join us in pressuring the government to make an immediate investment in a new, genuinely affordable, long-lasting generation of social homes. Please sign our open letter urging all party leaders to make this investment so that no child or adolescent will ever have to worry about finding housing.

Published in https://blog.shelter.org.uk/2023/12/teachers-england-children-homeless/