Overview: The University of Strathclyde works actively to ensure care experienced and estranged students can access safe halls accommodation across the summer periods that are so problematic to many care experienced and estranged students.  The summer offer is open to all relevant Home/UK students of any year and includes guaranteed/priority access to halls. This is backed up with access to emergency housing to enable crisis response alongside planned cover. 

The university team use ‘push’ communication pre-entry and annually in the academic cycle, liaising with Local Authorities to ensure that young people are aware, and claiming/receiving relevant wraparound support from all stakeholders and to dovetail to the provision in a 39-week academic year as smoothly as possible.  Summer housing is integrated into the wider suite of support for students. 

Resourcing:  Engagement with students is shared across the team of two under the Strathclyde Cares banner with staff from the widening access function, plus accommodation colleagues.  In the last cycle 16 students were housed over the summer across the institution.   

Scotland/Scottish students benefit from a progressive student funding environment with funding agency SAAS administering a summer grant scheme for care experienced undergraduates.  The award of over £1,330 or £665 (depending on whether the tenancy is formal or informal, is sufficient to cover, or significantly contribute to, summer term rent in university cities.  Key to note is that, currently, the summer after graduation and before registration is excluded from this scheme.  Similarly, estranged students are not captured under this grant scheme though some may come under the wider definition of ‘care experience’ used in the Scottish context.  These students can naturally still access the summer housing but require greater financial advice and guidance support to do so. 

Monitoring/Evaluation: At present, quantitative measurement of student success and retention – whether care experienced and estranged students buck national trends on drop-out rates – is monitored by an institution wide approach and the housing components are not evaluated in isolation though this may eventuate at institutional or indeed national Government level in time. 

Housing shouldn’t be seasonal.

Guaranteed safe and stable accommodation year-round is not a “nice to have” for care-experienced and estranged students; it is the foundation that allows them to stay, study, and build a future. When housing is uncertain, everything else becomes harder: attendance, wellbeing, finances, academic focus, and the ability to take part in university life.

For care-experienced and estranged students, accommodation is never just about having a bed to sleep in. It is about having one part of life that is predictable enough to make study possible. Too often, universities treat housing as a separate issue from widening participation, student success, or wellbeing. In reality, it sits at the centre of all three. When accommodation breaks down, the whole student experience becomes unstable.

A systems approach starts with a simple truth: students should not have to navigate a maze of hidden schemes, inconsistent advice, or last-minute crisis support to keep a roof over their heads. Many care-experienced and estranged students arrive at university without the family safety net that other students can fall back on. That means the system has to do more, not less, to prevent housing insecurity. If support only appears once a student is already in crisis, it is too late. Consider a university implementing a centralised support system that provides them with immediate access to housing resources, counselling, and financial planning. The university can intervene before crises arise. Instead of waiting for students to reach a breaking point, this proactive approach ensures they have a stable living situation and can focus on their studies, illustrating the importance of a cohesive support network in preventing housing insecurity from the outset.

Year-round accommodation matters because students’ lives do not pause during the summer. Yet summer can be one of the most vulnerable times of the year. Accommodation contracts often end before students have somewhere else to go, and many students cannot return home. That leaves them trying to piece together temporary housing, work, travel, and storage while also staying financially afloat. For students who are already managing separation from family, unstable income, or previous housing insecurity, the summer break can turn into a period of anxiety rather than rest.

When universities do not build stable housing into their support systems, the consequences are serious. Students may spend more time commuting, moving between short-term arrangements, or working extra hours just to afford rent. That affects academic performance, leading to missed lectures, reduced engagement, and lower confidence. It also creates a constant background stress that makes it harder to concentrate, ask for help, or feel that the university is a place where they belong. In some cases, students leave higher education altogether because the housing system around them is simply too fragile.

Summer housing also affects access to internships, work experience, and wider social mobility. When students do not have a stable place to stay over the holidays, they are less able to take up unpaid or low-paid opportunities, move to where placements are based, or commit to roles that could strengthen their CVs and professional networks. From a systems perspective, this creates a hidden inequality; students with family homes or financial backup can use summer to build experience and contacts, while care-experienced and estranged students may spend that same period searching for accommodation, managing costs, or trying to avoid housing instability. The result is not just short-term stress, but a long-term disadvantage in graduate outcomes, earnings, and career progression.

Meaningful support looks different from a one-off hardship fund or a vague promise that students can get in touch if they need help, such as through a single point of contact that some students only hear about once a year. It means clear, proactive, named pathways into accommodation support from the moment a student applies. It means identifying care-experienced and estranged students early, explaining what they are entitled to, and making sure staff across admissions, student support, housing, and finance understand how to act. It means guaranteed accommodation available year-round, including summer, without students having to reprove their vulnerability every time a contract ends.

It also means designing systems that reduce unnecessary complexity. Students should not have to know the right staff member, use the right phrase, or disclose their circumstances repeatedly just to access support that should already be available. Universities need joined-up processes, clear information, and a culture where housing is treated as part of student retention and success, not an afterthought. If support depends on a student’s ability to self-advocate in a system full of barriers, the system is failing them.

For care-experienced and estranged students, stable accommodation can be the difference between surviving university and thriving in it. It creates the conditions for us to rest, study, connect, and grow. It gives students a secure base from which to plan, rather than constantly reacting to the next housing crisis.

For care-experienced and estranged students, stable accommodation is essential for thriving in their academic journey. We must prioritise year-round housing solutions and proactive support to ensure that all students can pursue their futures without the burden of housing insecurity.

Disruption rather than self-development. This is what university life can look like without guaranteed, safe, and stable year-round accommodation.

Essentially without a safe and stable accommodation all year-round, including summers; a care experienced and estranged student has no foundation for their home or their education. The place where students live is a house, rather than a ‘home.’ No sense of warmth, time to settle or make meaningful memories.

For this group of students the narrative that can often stick in their minds is:  how long can I stay here before I have to make my next move? Or will I become homeless again this year? This is an inherent injustice and needs to change.

When universities choose not to acknowledge this, students without family support are not given their basic rights as students: the right to safe, stable, and secure accommodation that enables them to fully participate in university life. Without this foundation, housing stress becomes a persistent and overwhelming challenge. They are forced to grow up and mature within an institution that does not understand the toll this takes on their physical body and mental health. Securing the best grades is not the priority, rather the higher education journey becomes one that is tied to understanding tenancy agreements on your own, grappling with rent that is unaffordable in a cost of living crisis, repeating your story, applying for a hardship fund, trying to find time to meet deadlines as well as moving into your new home and of course, we cannot forget having to secure a guarantor – all on your own. It becomes really hard.

Without family support care experienced and estranged students can be re-traumatised by their personal circumstances which defeats the purpose of choosing to study at university in the first place – to have independence, freedom and a stable future for themselves. The decision is taken to begin again, start afresh. Yet, the opposite happens. Without this support, students are less likely to progress or complete their degrees. University should be the best years of an individual’s life, an opportunity to build a future, create new friendships and strengthen academic skills.

In practice, meaningful support means understanding the fundamental housing needs of the student. In the case of care experienced and estranged students there is simply no family home to return to during university breaks. That is why care experienced and estranged students require the guarantee of year-round accommodation – without this, students without family support face becoming homeless, are left in a position of housing instability and worrying about their next steps. 

The summer period is particularly important to acknowledge.

Unfortunately, housing stress also continues once this group of students once they graduate – more importantly this should be a time in their life where their academic achievements are celebrated.  Guaranteed accommodation can easily fix this problem because it will give students without family support the opportunity to secure that job role they have worked tirelessly for, have time to consider appropriate housing options and make a transition out of university. Supporting students to access housing in the summer after they graduate is an easy, small step universities can take that would make a significant difference. Something organised by right, not by having to jump through multiple hoops that make it too challenging.  But this can only happen if we ask the right questions and understand the individual needs and circumstances of students like me..

Tackling this issue can mean the difference between succeeding and failing, securing a degree or dropping out when life becomes too difficult. Graduating with peers or dreaming about this. The experiences of those with a care background or those who are estranged students is an important reminder that the higher education sector can learn from this group – it’s not just care experienced and estranged students that might need guaranteed, year round accommodation, but if you can get it right for us, you can get it right for others.

Supporting the Unite Foundations Blueprint will help to overcome the housing stress students are under, help to build a stronger foundation for those studying without family support, shape the place they call ‘home,’ their learning, wellbeing and future. When this is in place, students can fully engage, contribute, and succeed.