A SCHEME to help homeless young people has been officially launched in Bromsgrove.

Accommodation site The New Road Foyer will provide a home and skills training for 15 young people aged between 16 and 25 year olds.

Youth homelessness charity St Basils was awarded £1.5 million of Supporting People funding in 2009 to develop housing related support services for young people in North Worcestershire and as well as Bromsgrove it now has similar schemes in Redditch and Kidderminster.

The Bromsgrove accommodation scheme, which was built by WM Housing Group, is staffed 24 hours a day and encourages people living there to take up education, training or employment.

With funding from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), WM Housing Group commissioned the purpose-built Bromsgrove scheme liaising with Walker Troup Architects to ensure that, as well as providing spacious self-contained flats, the scheme offered well equipped communal areas and ICT training facilities.

With 15 young people moved in to the New Road site, the scheme is now full and already starting to make a difference to the young people who live there.

One of the young residents who moved there in February 2011 said: “It’s great to know this help is available if people need it, and for me this scheme has turned a negative situation into a positive one; I’m training to be a youth worker myself now and it’s the help and support I’ve had here that has inspired me to do that.”

The New Road Foyer was opened at a launch event on October 27 by the deputy civic head of Bromsgrove District Council, Councillor Janice Boswell.

Councillor Boswell said: “This is a delightful place; I am so pleased to be here, it makes so many people happy and gives young people a new lease of life. Everyone involved in the project including the designers, the builders and the funders think it’s working really well and with St Basils heading up the scheme I knew it would, because what they do works, and they have been doing it for a long time”.