Teenager let down by Crawley Council

We have been supporting a teenage boy in prison who was released on 8th October 2007 to homeless accommodation and now his local authority is telling him to look in the yellow pages for accommodation as he is not a “priority need”. This lad has been rejected by his parents, has spent weeks in residential care but has hardly been in school since he was 10 and can barely read and write. He has a long history of offending including taking and driving away. Yet the local authority (Crawley you know who you are) wrote to him telling him it had no duty to help him or get him accommodation. He should go on the council’s list and trawl local estate agents. Did they think he is going to purchase a bijoux pad? The lad spoke to us because he couldn’t understand the letter other than that he had to be out of the accommodation by the end of the month.

If children don’t have parents to care for them, someone has to. The state, in the form of local authorities, has a clear responsibility. They have to look after these children as their own, and that means not just somewhere safe and comfortable to live but a plan for education, training or work. It is what we do for our children. Or how can we be surprised that when they are literally dumped on the streets that they turn to drugs and crime. Silly Crawley. Legal action pending. You won’t know what hit you.