‘Removing the barriers to education for homeless young people utilising a psychologically informed approach’…
20.05.2021: For this week’s PIE blog, as the Lead for Psychologically Informed Environments (PIE) at the national youth homeless charity: Centrepoint, I have the great pleasure of handing over the blog to Dr Marc Pescod (Educational Psychologist). Marc has been volunteering with Centrepoint for several years now, first as a trainee educational psychologist completing his Doctorate in Educational Psychology research project with Centrepoint and more recently supporting our CP Works team to reflect upon and develop their psychologically informed practice. CP works is the operational team that support our homeless young people into education, employment and training. Therefore, these amazing frontline staff form a key part of our ‘team around a young person’ to #EndYouthHomelessness by ensuring that homeless young people have meaningful and productive day time activities, that reduce their risk of future homelessness and allow them to reach their full potential within society.
Moving forward, we are hoping that Marc can formally join the PIE team in the future, because of the importance of embedding a PIE approach not just within our support and housing work, but more widely in all Centrepoint’s work with homeless young people including our education, training and employment offer. This also makes Centrepoint unique in the youth homeless sector in that our PIE team will consist of not just clinical psychologists, but also have the specific skills, knowledge and perspective of an educational psychologist. I believe this will enable our offer to homeless young people to be truly holistic and ensure that we are working to remove the barriers to education, employment and training that can often perpetuate homelessness in the longer term and prevent young people moving onto independent living. Therefore, I will hand over to Marc who will outline some of the findings of his research on the barriers to education in homeless young people, as well as discuss some of his recent input into CP works. After which, Sadie Odeogberin (Lead for CP works — IAG Team) has also written some reflections from her perspective about her collaboration with Marc so far. But first, over to Marc….
‘I am delighted and excited to write this week’s PIE blog. I have an interest in supporting young homeless people access education and wanted to take this opportunity to explore some of the difficulties faced by young people experiencing homelessness and look at some of the great work we are doing to support young people with these difficulties in mind. We know that the impact of being homeless is significant and far reaching on young peoples’ lives. However, the impact of homelessness on education is often focused on less and even overlooked in schools, colleges and university. Therefore, it might be useful to start by considering some research looking into this area.
Research into education and homelessness: Academically, young homeless people are at heightened risk of failing school (Sullivan-Walker et al, 2017) and achieve less than their housed peers and children from low-income families (Buckner, 2008). In addition, there is a higher proportion of young homeless people with disabilities than the average population (Sullivan-Walker et al, 2017). With a higher rate of SEN (Special Educational Needs) within the young homeless population, more support is therefore needed to help these young people achieve academically. However, with an increasing level of absenteeism, this becomes challenging. Young homeless people are also more likely to get expelled from school due to difficulties related to emotion and social difficulties (Aratani, 2009). For example, it has been highlighted that 51% of young homeless people have experience an exclusion from school due to these factors (Crises, 2012).
Motivation towards education: During my own studies I was interested in exploring the experiences of young homeless people and was fortunate to complete research with homeless young people currently being supported by Centrepoint, in which I explored some of their experiences while being homeless. These experiences generally feel under two categories: (1) individual motivation towards education and (2) the accessibility of education. For example, homeless young people spoke about strong feelings of not being motivated to engage in education. The lack of stability and the loss of contact with their responsible adult reduced any external pressure and support to attend their educational setting. They mentioned that they felt they were alone in motivating themselves to attend school and manage the difficulties that come alongside this. In addition, due to the majority of the young people experiencing failure in academia, either through failing exams or being previously excluded from school, this led to feelings of helplessness and the perception that school was inaccessible. These negative experiences reinforced their lack of motivation to attend.
It was also noticed that there were a number of young homeless people whose motivation towards education changed frequently as a result of changes in personal circumstances that occurred during their homeless journey. Often individuals’ motivation would change for the better. This was reported to be in the form of a life event which dramatically altered their context, changing their perception of education, or when they found a passion or career path, which suited them. However, it is important to note that similarly motivation can decrease quickly when individual experience added stress in their lives, such as being rehoused or when conflict arose. Therefore, motivation towards education in homeless young people can be fleeting and unpredictable.
When young people do find motivation in education it usually comes from a desire to obtain something better. Education can be seen as a gateway to being able to progress in certain careers and get, otherwise unobtainable, jobs. This requires an individual to have a clear idea of what they want to achieve and often this is less about financial incentive but a ‘journey’, which suits their experience such as youth work and/or social work. Alternatively, education may be seen as a way to avoid an undesirable future. Young homeless people see education as a way of moving away from feelings of worthlessness; there is an awareness of the negative narrative around homelessness, and this is something they do not wish to be part of. Therefore, education can become a way to move away from this.
Accessibility of Education: Ultimately, it often doesn’t matter the motivation felt by individuals to engage in education as their ability to access it is often dependant on other factors such as the accessibility of schools, the ability to obtain the necessary resources to attend school, being supported by the necessary individuals, and being able to meet their basic needs (e.g. housing, food). As mentioned previously, young homeless people often identify as have SEN (Special Educational Needs), which would suggest they need additional and necessary support to access an education. This often is not put in place for this population due to not having paperwork follow them from school to school/college and not having an adult to advocate or support them in getting the support they need. In addition, one homeless young person in my study spoke about how homelessness itself is an additional need and is something that is rarely considered or supported by schools.
Moreover, this population often need to manage their basic needs, an issue that is often not experienced by young people in the general population. For example, they may need to consider difficulties around managing their own finances, getting enough food, managing health issues and focus on keeping themselves safe. This means that they may not have the capacity to engage in learning. Despite this the homeless young people in my research often discussed touching and empowering stories around how education was so important to them they would persevere and tolerate missing essentials to ensure they succeed in school. Lastly, homeless young people reported that a massive factor, which both hindered and supported them to access education, was ‘relationships’. For example, losing contact with family and close friends can become a hindrance to them feeling able to access education. However, in contrast, many of the young people in my research spoke about how Centrepoint staff took up this role, becoming a guide, a mentor, and a point of motivation making education seem like a viable opportunity to them once again.
What are we doing in Centrepoint? Since completing my research, I have been volunteering at Centrepoint to encourage the organisation to think about how to improve the educational experience of the homeless young people we support, through a psychologically informed perspective. The two main areas of work I have been involved in so far have been with the Information and Guidance Team (IAG) in CP Works and supporting the development of the ‘M’Power’ programme. Firstly, I have been working with the IAG team to explore some of the paperwork they use when they first meet with homeless young people. One such document looks at capturing important information as well as their educational history. Knowing that homeless young people will often have had a negative previous experience within education, we considered how we could use this space to capture their experience and perceptions in a way that we can focus on what needs to be done to support them on their journey back into college or work. By doing so both the young person and staff know exactly what barriers to might be facing and a better understanding of what is needed to overcome these.
Therefore, this is taking a psychologically informed perspective to educational assessments, in order to best target future interventions to support them to return to education and improve their outcomes once they are engaging in education. Future work planned as part of my role within Centrepoint, will hopefully extend this work on ‘barriers to education’ to include the provision of specific learning / neuropsychological assessments of referred young people. These can be used to identify specific diagnosable barriers to learning (e.g. learning disabilities, dyslexia, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder: ADHD etc.) so that we can tailor our support accordingly. Sadly, many of our homeless young people might display behaviours that are suggestive of these issues, but can struggle to access formal assessments within the current statutory system, due to long waiting lists further delaying targeted interventions. I also hope to develop and deliver further PIE training modules for our frontline staff on educational psychology topics and these learning difficulties.
Secondly, I have been working with CP works around the ‘M’Power’ programme. This is an alternative approach looking at how to engage homeless young people in education in a manner that is relevant and accessible to them. I was part of the working group reviewing this programme; focusing on the length of time to complete the courses, promoting inclusivity and autonomy in the tasks by providing a range of different approaches to completing the same task, developing relatedness and connection with peers, and teaching staff to encourage community learning. Most importantly, it was about ensuring that we are providing a psychologically safe and nurturing space wherein homeless young people feel confident to engage in learning again. All issues that we know sadly most traditional educational courses lack.
The truth is that traditional approach to education is not equally accessible to all populations and, for young people who are experiencing homelessness, there is a clear and noted disadvantage. Therefore, I see my role as an Educational Psychologist to help us to create equitable opportunities by advising and empowering a team of CP works staff who are knowledgeable and equipped to support young people become the best learners they can be and by advising on innovative learning opportunities, which are suited to this population. This psychologically informed approach in understanding the difficulties which homeless young people experience in education is essential to increase the likelihood that they may be ready to consider education again and #changetheirstory. Moreover, that we can also ensure that we are providing appropriate psychologically informed support to them as they take that crucial first step…’
And finally, some reflections from Sadie about her work with Marc to date…
‘In February 2018, Marc wrote to me asking to carry out some research on youth homelessness and the anecdotal evidence and impact to their education for his Educational Psychology PhD. We accepted his offer to work with us and share his findings. On completion of his PhD, Marc emailed to say he would like to share his research findings with Centrepoint and we invited staff from policy, fundraising and CP Works (Skills & Employment — S&E) to listen to the highlights of his research and ask questions. However, it didn’t stop there! Marc was inspired to continue to want to support the educational work being carried out with homeless young people in Centrepoint. As a consequence he completed the volunteering training, and has been a silent champion of psychologically informed practice within our approach to education in S&E ever since. To date, he has helped to reframe our learning assessments toolkit, review our cognitive assessments and include educational psychology into our strategic approach to align with the wider organisational PIE journey. Our staff are keen to work with him in order to develop their understanding and skills set, and as a result are now better equipped to provide psychologically informed engagement and support to homeless young people on their education, employment and training journey…’
