Cyrenians responds to the September Programme for Government

Responding to the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government announcement Cyrenians Chief Executive Ewan Aitken said:

Scotland is in the grip of a Housing Crisis which will fatally undermine the efforts to make progress on child poverty announced in yesterday's Programme for Government if it is not urgently addressed. Yet the Government missed the opportunity to announce any new or additional support for housing.

There are over 9,860 children housed in temporary accommodation in Scotland today. For these children their schooling is often disrupted, their mental health is impacted and their parents face huge barriers to remaining in employment. Even if a child has access to good education in a secure family setting, we know that the benefits of that won’t be as effective if they don’t also have a safe, secure and properly equipped home to live in.

Increasing investment in family support and early education to support children living below the breadline is an important preventative tool and it is vital that prevention is well resourced in a crisis. However, we cannot afford to view these problems in isolation. Unless we start joining the dots between child poverty, homelessness and other forms of deprivation – and invest in preventing these problems whilst also rapidly building social housing, neither problem will be solved.
 
Whilst we welcome – and ourselves have helped facilitate – outside investment in housing, it is only the Government that can build in response to the most urgent need. To end child poverty – and prevent homelessness -we need significant investment in homelessness prevention and social housing stock now, otherwise we won’t get anywhere.