What happens if a 17 year old is kicked out of home?

[AllieLove]

What happens?

And my parents were far from on the breadline. Both doctors, both working in medicine and academia/the civil service with excellent salaries, and a 6 bed house.

Partly why I had no clue benefits and homeless shelters existed.

See this is the thing; somehow (I can't remember or work out how, nobody was helping me) I eventually came to know about HB, and claimed that and Income Support through the last part of upper sixth.

Until then I'd sofa-surfed around our nice MC suburb with literally no money for 6 months.

And then I didn't apply for uni funding because I didn't know about estrangement rules, so I didn't take up my place , I drifted off alone and set about supporting myself for 3 years ( I DID know I would be considered financially an independent student at 21).

So I tried to support myself on low skilled, low pay jobs @ about £2 ph (early 90s).

I wasn't as unlucky as you and never spent a night without a roof or had anything really catastrophic happen BUT I lived in shitty places and got into dodgy situations and abusive relationships and went without food and never claimed HB while working because I didn't know THAT was allowed. So I was grindingly poor and cold and under-equipped - I just had sheets and a single small saucepan for two or three years; no kettle, no duvet, no blankets.

And I look back and think why did no-one take ownership and refer me at any stage? For support or advice? Even the school? I could have got student finance and gone straight to uni and been safer. But my parents were professionals too. So maybe assumptions were made by onlookers. I don't know. I was never even questioned by anyone about the abuse or the incident that had led to me being homeless at 17. I do wonder whether it's only ever been teens already known to SS who have been likely to be picked up and helped?

I have some involvement with a foyer now but the client group there is largely care leavers, so although I support it, I didn't really see my younger self reflected there. I'd love to now how unusual non-care-leaving homeless teens fending for themselves are.

She needs some kind of advocate,

Yes, exactly that.

Supported lodgings maybe would be very good too.

You're an absolute for providing supported lodgings by the way stitch

" finding yourself near the edge, you would push your 17 year old over the precipice and let them go knocking on doors looking for a bed, rather than all stick together and eat plain pasta. I'm looking at this as the mother of a 17yo DD now. "

has she ever stolen your car? smashed your car windscreen? been thrown out of school and then jacked in a college course with no thought that this would stop the money? has she ever taken your card offering to go and get electricity, then helped herself to 60 quid and left you and the other child sitting in a remote house with no electric? Come towards you with a petrol can and lighter? pushed you over? come to your new lodgings and stolen your landlady's car? how about getting involved with drug dealers so that one of them comes round and punches you? getting involved with other drug dealers that are a bit kinder, but still need paying off?
No?
well please do not judge me for telling my son to find his own way.

Sorry Brat, I was just answering your point that maybe benefit cuts/ NEET status were involved in the case of the OP's friend's DD.

I had no idea you were thinking of your DS. You hadn't told us all that.

well i know but i am saying now...:)
Also, it is not just a question of getting cheaper food.
Once the tax credits stop, the child benefit stops, the HB stops, the lot. And that is it...
Never mind that an absent father owes me thousands, oh no, nothing stops for him.
Sorry I sound a bit self pitying.

Could I just say that if the mother is asking the teen to pay her way, this is probably because the teen is NEET which means that the mother has had her money cut. for people close to the breadline, this could be enough to push them over the edge.

That^ was the post that I was responding to.

Once the tax credits stop, the child benefit stops, the HB stops, the lot. And that is it...
Never mind that an absent father owes me thousands, oh no, nothing stops for him.
Sorry I sound a bit self pitying.

Don't apologise. That all sounds terrifying and just horrendous.

Thank you Manumission xx i wish I had never joined this convo as I am now upset and have to go to work.

Splash cold water on your face and read the 'save the date' or 'decorate the wedding reception' threads for 3 minutes

Offred, your story is heartbreaking. I am so glad to hear that life is much brighter for you now. I hope you are proud every day of what you have achieved. Awful parents indeed - I don't think I would be able to describe them in such charitable terms. Some people should not be allowed within 500 miles of a vulnerable child, let alone being allowed to have full responsibility for them

for you and for everyone on this thread who has struggled to find shelter

Was still not better to be kicked out though - because I did not get the right support. I was a forgotten about child.

It should be better to be kicked out when your home life is that bad.

There should be a decent system to catch teens in this position. And referral guidelines in every school, college, GP surgery etc to make sure that they get identified and helped.

Oh and the top of the range German car that was stolen from a hotel car park and wrapped round a tree.
Hope this is not getting identifying.

She needs to go to the Council and present herself as homeless.

The problem is prejudice that is built into the system re parental income. I have experienced this myself with special needs DD. Because I am a benefit claimant with no job it has been an uphill struggle to get the social worker to understand that she has SEN, it is not that she needs courses for NT children on what is appropriate behaviour. She is super sensitive and highly aware that she has behaved really badly when she comes out of meltdown. Going on a course to learn about appropriate behaviour would just negatively affect her self esteem making meltdowns more likely IMO. I only became aware she may be ASD recently because her school were covering up all the probs till SS, EWO etc got involved and convened a CIN meeting. Since I have been aware I have managed her sensory needs etc and voila no real meltdowns so CAHMS and SS are now listening to me.

In my case the education system was aware as early as age 14 that I was being abused at home and in school (sexually assaulted regularly by a boy in my class). They left my parents to manage it, they managed it badly.

Healthcare system was aware of my medical issues - anxiety, depression, drinking. They left my family to manage it. They sent us to family therapy when my parents insisted but all they did there was allow my parents to continue emotionally abusing me and lecture me about how much I was hurting them. I got an SHO, my parents got a consultant. I stopped going.

My parents got me sent to a course for NEET kids so they could learn basic maths and English which wasn't appropriate because I had still managed 1 A and 8 Bs in GCSE despite only doing 3 days at school.

I told them I was being abused. They told me every teen hates their parents and I would grow out of it. Then they called my parents in.

Then I was kicked out.

No-one cared about me because I had rich parents.

Their main issue with me was that I was an atheist and they are catholic.

They think they are saving my soul doing all this. They are deluded.

So I think definitely this girl (and every vulnerable teen) needs someone to advocate for them as they negotiate what is likely to be a very difficult time in their life.

Fake - How at 16 did you get a tenancy agreement and checks done and pay deposit? Sounds like you were one of the lucky ones

Prolly the same way I got a bar job at 17 - lying to a dodgy person who doesn't check!

I think deferring to plausible, well-heeled, professional parents can be an issue across services. Hopefully it isn't quite often that damaging for the DC.

I mainly lied to get a higher wage as no clue about benefits. Was a catering job and they put me on the catering outlets with bars because I was '18'.

Leopard I can't remember all the specifics 20odd years later but I remember being frightened in my little rented studio flat over a shop because there were rough people about, a flimsy door and there was no phone. I had to wait until I was 18 to get a landline and was so relieved when I did.

So renting a place was doable before 18 (albeit a complete fleapit in a dodgy area) but renting a phoneline wasn't.

And I certainly didn't have tenancy checks or deposit. I was potless. It was always exploitative LLs, shady neighbours, scary electrics kind of places.

And fake was doing all this 10 years before I was.

The point is ideally, it should have been very different.

I think children of well heeled professionals are more likely to end up worse off really. I don't think my parents are particularly plausible TBH, most people think they are obviously insane but put it down to being 'eccentricity' rather than pathology.

My dad is a hoarder. You can see that poverty/wealth prejudice in action the most there. If they had the kinds of things they do in their house - pill packets popped and pills crushed on the kitchen table, piles of paper everywhere, mouldering food in the kitchen in boxes piled up etc in a council estate and they were on benefits SS would have been told and we would have been taken away. But no 'ha ha ha! Aren't they eccentric?!'

Obviously it is not always like that but I literally had no clue that there was support like benefits. I had never had any experience of anyone around me claiming benefits. I didn't even really know about 'the council' etc it took me having loser boyfriends and being around other people who were claiming for me to even find out about their existence. I think it will be like that for many kids from this kind of wealthy home.