Britain's street kids

A harrowing but excellent Dispatches documentary about Britain's street children last night on Channel 4.

Children who run away from home, or forced to leave, or in the case of one put into care and then running away from that.

The difficulty they face accessing secure accommodation (one so happy when she got two weeks in a B &B).

We were told that upwards of 100,000 children become homeless every year and following the spending review, is likely to increase.

There was one, a Scottish girl called Robyn, a heroin addict. She said at the age of 12 she was so desensitized by the violence she experienced at home that the street could only be a better place for her. She's met them all; rapists, peodophiles, the mentally ill who in a moment of rage would threaten to kill her.

Later in the documentary you see her selling the Big Issue, talking about how she envies girls her age who don't realise how lucky they are. With her wisdom, she could become a teacher. I went to bed so wishing someone watched that documentary who can add to the opportunities she's trying to create for herself.

Another 16 year old who was featured was a girl called Chelsey. It's very hard for some teenagers to ask for help as there's so much mistrust of authority. By the end of the programme though, she has been offered a long stay hostel and is training to be a plasterer.

Seventeen year old Sophie squats with her 34 year old drug dealer boyfriend having been abandoned by her mother years and years before. The relationship ends, we see her sofa surfing here and there and finally reunited with her mother. This doesn't work out. What will happen to her as she turns 18?

There was only one boy, Haydon, evicted by his mother after several 'last chances'. An agency finds him emergency accommodation but he realises he's 'too young' to live on his own and returns to his mum, which is lucky for him.

I want the coalition to reduce the deficit by skimming from those who tax avoid and tax evade, not by taking from those who have so little in the first place.

It was an important documentary this, coming at a very good time. Things can get worse but it doesn't have to, and it shouldn't have to.

http://www.railwaychildren.org.uk/