Dispatches - Britain's Street Kids - 2010.11.01

Monday 01 November 2010, 8PM, Channel 4

Every day hundreds of kids are forced to leave home. According to charities like Railway Children, the number of homeless children is bound to rise as a result of the recent government budget cuts.

This crisis in Britain's families has created an itinerant population of young people without support or a roof over their heads. The state has to provide, at an immense cost, while voluntary organisations try to plug the gaps in the face of drastic cutbacks and closures.

Dispatches follows four teenagers over six months who are struggling to fend for themselves on the streets. They're simultaneously at risk and a risk to society, and for all four of them drugs become a way of life, a means of dealing with the stresses and challenges of life away from family and home comforts.

All talk candidly and eloquently about why they take flight: family breakdowns, addiction, violence, neglect and abuse. The unspoken truth behind their stories points to both inadequate parenting and severe lack of consistent and effective care once they have left home.

Dispatches explores the hidden world of runaway and evicted teenagers, giving them a voice for the first time, and celebrating their extraordinary ability to fend for themselves.

Britain's Street Kids: Profiles
Thursday 28 October 2010

Background information on the young people featured in Britain's Street Kids

Robyn
A veteran of the streets of Edinburgh, Robyn seems older than her 16 years. Brought up in a household defined by violence and addiction, she left home aged 12 and soon afterwards was injected with heroin for the first time. She was placed in a series of children's homes and proceeded to run away from all of them, encountering rapists, paedophiles and the mentally ill as she slept rough in, among other places, Edinburgh's graveyards. Four years later, she is determined to conquer her addiction and her demons.

Chelsey
16-year-old Chelsey left home 18 months ago and has stayed in dozens of different hostels in South London since. 'Every day is a battle', she says – most frequently with council housing officials. Her inability to engage with the system is symptomatic of street kids: Chelsey is ill-equipped to deal with any adult in authority but needs them to survive.

Sophie
17-year-old Sophie's life is a constant rollercoaster of party drugs, emotional attachments and short-term accommodation. We meet her sharing a squat with her 34-year-old dealer boyfriend, and track her as she 'sofa surfs' across Bristol. Eventually, Sophie moves in with her mum who abandoned her 14 years ago but their reunion proves short-lived.

Haydon
Despite his 17 years, Haydon is ill-suited to life on the streets. Evicted by his mother after a family dispute, we meet him hours after he is made homeless. In desperation he turns to one of Bristol's frontline agencies for teenagers. The agency finds him emergency accommodation in a backstreet bed and breakfast. For Haydon it is a humbling experience – away from home for the first time, he understands he's 'too young to move out', but can't see a way to get his mum to take him back in.

Profiles from http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/articles/britains-street-k...

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Watch Online - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LdQlfFhxbE
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Enjoy Con|Cen.

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