A social enterprise helping to prevent youth homelessness is enlisting East Anglian businesses to help with its mission.

Your Own Place, which offers support for young people to move into and manage their own home, is planning to take on 260 business people in Norfolk and Suffolk as volunteer tenancy mentors.

The enterprise – which opened a training flat in Norwich city centre for its service users last autumn – received £168,000 of funding from innovation foundation Nesta through its Savers Support Fund, to provide training for the business mentors.

The mentors will be partnered with a young person to provide one-to-one support, but Your Own Place director Rebecca White stresses the arrangements will be informal, to help young people and their mentors get the most from the experience.

'It will be led by the young person as they know what they need. The mentor can help to empower them to find their own solutions,' she said.

'It is about having someone they can contact and speak to, which some young people are not fortunate enough to have.'

Ms White said the project – which will see businesses pay for mentoring training for staff – should be financially self-sustaining by March 2020, when its funding from Nesta will come to an end.

'It is a staff development opportunity,' she said. 'Businesses can make the case for having staff with improved social skills and leadership skills, and a better recruitment and retention package for new staff.

'This is much more impactful than just a CSR [corporate social responsibility] donation.'

Your Own Place supports vulnerable 16 to 25-year-olds including those in care, whose local authority support stops when they reach 18.

Ms White said conversations about the practicalities of living independently, particularly for care leavers, 'are such low priority that they are getting ignored'.

She believes the mentoring scheme will 'open people's eyes'. 'That is mentoring – nobody is telling you what to do, they give you options. This is something a mentor will be perfect for as they have been through the process of buying or renting so they could have advice to offer.'

A seminar for interested businesses is taking place at Jarrold in Norwich on November 22.

'Services like this are vital'

Simon George, 18, was put in touch with Your Own Place by social services to help him make the transition from care to independent life.

He has been living in a rented flat in Thorpe Hamlet for five months.

He said: 'Rebecca talked to me about what I needed to do in a tenancy and it was really helpful. I do not think I would have been able to manage without their support.

'Services like this are vital because some people do struggle moving into their own place and living there. Even once they are in a place there are other problems that come up.

'Budgeting is a huge thing. Care leavers receive a £1,500 grant when they move into their own place, but a lot of people do not know what things will cost.'

Simon believes schools should play a part in educating young people about independent living.

'Teachers should be taught to teach students about it,' he said.