Baroness Louise Casey

So I've done homelessness, like with older age groups, like, you know...

We used to call them bag ladies.

They were my speciality.

I'm very good with older women that are very, very vulnerable on the streets.

I'm not very good.

They put up with me.

Let's put it that way.

Whereas many others don't.

And we started to see the numbers of homeless young people go up.

And so Centrepoint Night Shelter in London became a place people came to all over London and they queued.

So when I became the homeless to start, it became absolutely clear to me we had to do something about youth homelessness.

And one of the things which the then government agreed to was something called Educational Maintenance Allowance, which essentially we got it for homeless people first.

It was a little-known fact.

So it persuaded Blair & Co to basically allow us to give extra money to families whose kids stayed in education between 16 and 18 years.

And it kept them at home.

It was absolutely interesting.

And the evaluation of it, it was a small thing.

And then they kind of put that across the whole of young people to essentially encourage people to stay at home and to stay in education.

It was called Educational Maintenance Allowance.

So that is a better use of money.