What can we do for neurodivergent children in temporary accommodation?

It is clear that becoming homeless and being placed in emergency and temporary accommodation is a traumatic experience, and particularly so for families with children.

The disruption to lives in too many instances means severing local links with family and support networks, made worse by changes of school and primary healthcare arrangements. That negative experience is amplified with every move from one property to another while seeking a permanent home.

“The local authority reporting system for homelessness must record children with an Education, Health and Care Plan”

The Life in temporary accommodation for neurodivergent children and their families report for the APPG highlights the specific challenges that being in temporary accommodation inflicts on children living with neurodiversity.

An added dimension to this is that there is no data to show the prevalence of the problem.

Directly addressing this, one of the principal recommendations in the report is that the local authority reporting system for homelessness, Homelessness Case Level Collection (H-CLIC), must record children with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). This is followed up with a call for mandatory notification by a local authority when placing that family with a local GP and school.

The chronic lack of affordable and suitable accommodation that has escalated over the last decade across England has resulted in households being placed out of area, often many miles away.

The report recommends out-of-area placements for families be avoided as much as possible, but with an emphasis on not making such placements for families with a child who has an EHCP. It is recognised that this might not always be possible and in such cases there must be a timely transfer of the EHCP to the new local authority.

“It is recommended that in-service training for homelessness staff includes awareness of the condition and the impacts on the life of families”

At present there is an apparent lack of appreciation of the challenges that neurodiversity imposes on children. To address this, it is recommended that in-service training for homelessness staff includes awareness of neurodiversity and its impacts on the life of families.

All of these measures will be positive in relieving the pressures endured by families in temporary accommodation, but to really address the problem we need to see a major increase in the stock of social rented family-size homes.

The wholly inadequate supply of genuinely affordable good-quality homes lies at the root of the problem; the report highlights the issue and my casework in Dagenham and Rainham is testament to this.

Parents interviewed by the researchers in the preparation of the report said that living in temporary accommodation felt “like torture” for their neurodivergent children and for them as carers. I hope that we can substantially mitigate that by implementing the recommended reforms to the statutory homelessness guidance that the report calls for.

It’s not the full answer, but it would be a very positive start.

Margaret Mullane, MP, Dagenham and Rainham