Helping students to get the focus right

Paying bills, finding a flat, balancing a budget, knowing your rights as a tenant . . . these and other life-skills will form segments in a resource pack being developed by Focus Ireland, the movement for the homeless. The pack will be used in second-level schools next year.

As part of a pilot scheme, some of the 7,000 students studying the Leaving Cert Applied programme will be introduced to the pack in the spring. Initially it will be used in 10 second-level schools in the Dublin area, but by next September it's hoped that the scheme will be extended to all schools offering the LCA programme.

The pack aims to equip students with basic life-skills, as well as give them information about their rights and raise awareness of homelessness. Margaret O'Gorman, public awareness and education manager with Focus Ireland, says that estimates put the number of homeless people in Ireland at about 5,000.

Focus Ireland wants to raise awareness among second-level students about the problems and the issues related to homelessness. "There is a need to counteract stereotypes," says O'Gorman. "We want people to be more informed about it."

A high proportion of those who become homeless would not have parental support, she says. "They have been in some form of care." Last year over 5,000 people used Focus Ireland services. Overall over 84 per cent were under 40, she adds, with 50 per cent under 26 years of age.

Leaving Home, an earlier pack produced by Focus Ireland which has been used by many second-level teachers, is currently being adapted and updated to form the basis of the new pack.

"We would hope the updated pack will help students get a sense of what's needed in life," says O'Gorman. "We also hope that it will show them how to deal with a situation if they did become homeless themselves. We would see taking charge as most important for them and that they get a sense of how to cope and how to hold a place."

A significant number of young people who become homeless have ambitions `to be something' or `do something' with their lives, she says. "They would have dropped out of school. A very high proportion have come from some form of care. There would have been family disruption almost always early in their lives - and there are very often underlying factors of poverty."

Marie Rooney, a member of the Department of Education's support service for the LCA programme, says: "We are very pleased with the pack. We got very good feed-back from teachers who used the Leaving Home pack - we recommended it to our LCA schools."

At the moment up 7,000 students are doing the LCA programme in 175 schools. About one-third of these schools are based in Dublin.

The new pack will be useful in two parts of the programme, says Rooney. The Taking Charge section which is about issues such as leaving home, about finding a place to live and about knowing your rights as a tenant. The second part, Contemporary Issues, looks at issues of social justice, such as housing, voting, homelessness.

"Social education is quite a sizeable component of the programme," says Rooney, "and homelessness is an issue in which a lot of students are interested."

Focus Ireland's has just launched a website. Siobhan Parkinson, editor of Focus Ireland publications, says that the site - at www.focusireland.ie - will be "a source of information for people on our philosophy, our structure and on homelessness in general. It will generate interest and provide a public profile for the organisation."