Happy families

The downtime between Christmas and New Year is the perfect time to spend with your family.

Sadly, for many young people in the UK, life's not quite so simple.

Family breakdowns, overcrowding at home, risk of abuse and bereavement are just some of the reasons why teenagers may be spending Christmas away from home this year.

Fortunately, there are families that are willing to open their doors to these vulnerable young people to ensure that they have a secure and safe place to stay, not just at Christmas, but all year round.

Sharing their house with two young people this year are Pat and Gary Halligan from Wolverhampton.

The couple have five grown-up children between them, from previous marriages, and seven grandchildren. Now, aged 61 and 54 respectively, Pat and Gary are offering a welcoming place for young people that don't have a safe family home to go to through the YMCA Open Door project.

The project offers young people accommodation in a spare room in the homes of individuals, couples and families who live in the region to help them gain the confidence and skills they need to become independent adults.

One of the teenagers currently staying with the Pat and Gary is is 19-year-old Derice Wilson. Derice was 16 when his mother died and the young sports fan was left to take care of himself.

He was placed with the family back in 2012 and currently lives there with another young man from the scheme, 19-year-old Burrell.

Derice says: "Things were really bad, but a mate told me about the YMCA and they helped me find a place to stay.

"Things with Pat and Gary are going great. My life is finally back on track. Now I'm at college and hopefully I'll go to university to study sports coaching."

Pat and Gary are enjoying having Derice to stay, and are trying to give him the best possible start to adult life.

Since they began sharing their home, the couple have hosted 16 other young people in their spare room as part of the YMCA Nightstop scheme.

About 1,700 emergency bed nights were provided by families in the region this year, giving teenagers a secure place to sleep. Pat and Gary can receive a phone call at any time asking whether they can accommodate the visitor, and try to make them as comfortable as possible. Gary says: "All we're supposed to offer are meals and a bed, but we try to go a little bit further. We try and treat the guys like a part of our family.

"We take them to the doctors or social worker appointments and try to take care of the majority of their needs. What we really want is to make kids that stay with us better members of society.

"It's like a tree; we want to give them the roots to branch off and be better people. It's really brilliant to be able to give that, especially when you see how they're getting on afterwards. We had one boy come to stay with us and he's an air-conditioning fitter now in supermarkets – he has a good trade.

"When we met Derice, he was on the streets. There was no dad on the scene and his mum had died. Now he's doing a sports course at college. Burrell is going to college in January to start a photography course and we're so pleased. They're lovely lads and have never caused us any problems.

"Derice is a big 6ft 5in lad and I think that people might feel intimidated to have him in their house, but he's great. We were supposed to have him here for two years, which is up in August, but we might be able to have him for longer if he's in the education system. We hope so, we've really enjoyed having him here.

"We've even taken him on family holidays. We went to Lanzarote and Cornwall; he'd never been abroad before."

Gary works in security whilst Pat commits her time to taking care of the people that share her home.

She says: "We really enjoy it, and every one is a challenge. We gave Derice the first stable home he'd had since he was 13.

"We started doing it after Gary saw a poster in the Civic Centre for the scheme. We had an informal chat to start with and were told more about it, and then we applied to be hosts.

"We were told just after the Olympics that we'd been approved and within two hours we'd got our first young person to stay!"

It takes a special kind of person to entrust a stranger in your home, and Pat and Gary have had challenging experiences as well as the good.

Pat says: "We've got this easy way, an easy atmosphere that you can only really understand if you're here. We really enjoy what we do but it's not been perfect every time.

"You're always cautious on night stops, and we've had one bad experience. Some people have really challenging behaviour, but in our experience of about thirty or more kids, we've had only one or two bad experiences.

"The good thing is that the YMCA work to make sure that the people that join us are happy and we have their 100% backing with things. We could have a kid here that loves it or we could have someone who doesn't and they are given a better match elsewhere.

"They really try to match hosts with the young people as much as possible. Sometimes, if there's a young girl, she might not want to stop with just me and all these big men, so they would find her a more suitable place.

"We have people come back to visit us and sometimes, if they have a problem, we can still try to help them. We try our best to do what we do."

Nathan Adams, supported lodgings manager at the YMCA, says: "The project was set up in 2008 to provide safe accommodation in a family environment for some of the Black Country's most vulnerable teenagers. Hundreds of young people would have found themselves at greater risk of being exploited and harmed without YMCA Open Door and hosts like Pat and Gary.

"It is a privilege to give young people the chance to receive some support, settle down and start achieving goals that most teenagers take for granted such has progressing in education, enjoying good health and having financial stability."

As they gear up for a Christmas holiday, the unconventional family are looking forward to another good year.

Gary says: "There are different challenges every day but I wouldn't have it any other way – you don't want to do a mundane job day in and day out, do you?"