The Housing Authority, is spearheading a project called "Equal" to help 15 young people with the experience of institutional care to get training, support, jobs and eventually access to affordable housing.

We started this as a pilot project together with our colleagues in the Employment and Training Corporation, Appogg, the Department of Social Housing and others, in order to hopefully have a more helpful blueprint as to how we can help all young people who have spent some time in institutional care, or do not have the support structures we all take for granted, to really succeed in their adult lives when they leave care.

There are also substantial EU funds for the training and mentoring and the job search part of the project, and also a considerable contribution from the Housing Authority, mainly because we are running the project with EU funds but also funding the housing solutions ourselves.

We are currently in Phase Two of the project. In the first phase we basically collaborated with all the agencies involved in order to be clearer about what we would all be doing and how we would be doing it.

We also had to draw up an agreement with a partner abroad, as these sorts of projects are meant also to be learning experiences for all the members. Now in the second phase we have not only selected the young people involved but are also training and supervising them in their work placements. Interestingly we also felt it was important for these young people to try and experience living individually together in small groups, and we have also employed a mentor to give them any necessary support. It was incredibly difficult to find accommodation for these young people, and in a country riddled with stigmas it was challenging to find landlords who were willing to rent to kids who came out of homes, even though we were willing to give all the guarantees possible. However, with a lot of effort this challenge was overcome too.

A newsroom programme on Net TV recently brought home something we decided on paper into reality. It was good to see them all finally settled in their own shared flats. But there are many more challenges. After all we are expecting them to do more than your average 18-year-old who has mummy to cook, shop, tidy up and do the ironing. Maltese young people on average become independent quite late in life, so it is incredibly difficult for these kids to cope with doing all they have to do, including budgeting to live, with their background and baggage of difficult experiences. It really is to their credit that they are coping as well as they are with living independently.

The ETC has an incredibly important role in this phase as it really does all hinge on them becoming employable. Life skills courses have been organised with topics such as communication skills, time management and decision making. The trainer also focused on the skills needed to actually clinch that job at the interview stage. They now have a traineeship which they must complete, and then obtain a work placement. Following this we will help them to find affordable housing, either with our own flats or renting privately, or whatever solution is deemed appropriate for them at the time.

This project is turning out to be a real learning experience, not only for the kids involved but for all of us working in the various institutions that have an input in this area. It is probably the Housing Authority's most human project because we are trying to help rebuild lives, not just buildings. Hopefully we will learn enough to transpose this into a national policy on what package of support should be there for all our young people when they leave care.