HOMELESS teenagers will no longer be forced to live in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, ministers said yesterday.

Marking the 40th anniversary of the landmark BBC television drama Cathy Come Home, Ruth Kelly, the Communities Secretary, said there would be a new network of supported lodgings for young people who needed to find emergency accommodation.

The bed-and-breakfast alternative for young homeless would be phased out by 2010.

The new lodgings will offer advice about jobs, training and other services to help them to keep off the streets.

The Department for Communities and Local Government said almost a quarter of the 90,000 new cases of homelessness that local authorities take on each year are the result of parents no longer willing to accommodate children.

Cathy Come Home was screened in 1966, prompting a public outcry over homelessness. Filmed in a grittily realistic documentary style, the play told the story of a young couple, Cathy and Reg, and their child, who move into a modern home. They are evicted when Reg loses his job and their lives spiral downwards through unemployment, squatting, eviction and care homes. Finally, Cathy has her children taken away from her by the social services.

Charities for the homeless welcomed yesterday’s move, but are angry that the Government continually underestimates the number of homeless people.

Leslie Morphy, the new chief executive of Crisis, the housing charity, said about 400,000 people were without a home but were not counted because they slept in hostels or on the floor at homes of friends and family.

“Forty years on since Cathy Come Home we need to be much more ambitious and redouble our efforts to end homelessness. We must not ignore the plight of the single homeless adults who still do not have the right to access housing and the services they urgently need,” he said.

“These hidden homeless live under the government radar. We need to see real and substantial commitment to funding affordable permanent housing and innovative solutions that help homeless people reskill, find work and build positive networks.”

• The Government must do more to prevent thousands of vulnerable children in care being moved regularly from home to home, the children’s charity NCH said.

  It added that statistics showed 13 per cent of children in care were moved at least three times between April 2004 and March last year. Teenagers were the hardest hit; 71 per cent of those moved several times were aged between 10 and 18.

  The charity wants the Government to give foster parents more support to reduce the numbers in unsettled homes.

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