The charity’s annual youth homelessness survey revealed that the duration that young people stay in temporary accommodation has increased over the past five years with a large number now facing a wait of between 18 and 24 months before finding a settled home.

The survey, which covered 160 services who dealt with around 6,000 young homeless people over the last year, focused on the key areas of profile, causes, needs, rough sleeping, prevention, accommodation, moving on, and welfare reform as well as several questions looking at attitudes concerning youth housing and homelessness.

It found that family breakdown continued to be the single largest cause of youth homelessness, with young people having to leave home due to untenable relationships. Although it added that the most common outcome of prevention intervention, such as mediation, is for the young person to return to the family home.

Young homeless people in their twenties who ‘sofa surf’ do so for an average of over 28 days, while younger homeless people in their teens are more likely to sleep rough. Both groups were described as ‘hidden but hurting’.

The survey noted a general trend that young people who approach youth housing and homelessness services are doing so with increasingly complex needs and that LGBT youth and young people from ethnic minorities are over represented with little specialist support available for them.

It also revealed that organisations inconsistently record data relating to minority groups, or other groups likely to face prejudice, which may mean that they are under reported.

There is a need for better co-ordination between adult and adolescent mental health services, since young people aged 17 or 18 often face a gap in services, the survey added.

Homeless Action Scotland said homelessness workers responding to the survey have predicted that the housing needs of young people will worsen in the next five years. They see a lack of suitable housing stock as a bigger issue than poverty with many teams working within youth housing and homelessness experiencing increased workloads and a shrinking workforce.

Workers recognise that there is a lot of good practice taking place across Scotland within youth homelessness and that a wide array of skills are being used to assist young people out of the housing crisis but that much more needs to be done.

Homeless Action Scotland CEO Robert Aldridge said: “Although there have been great improvements in the way Scotland tackles homelessness over the years, this report shows that there is a huge amount of work still to be done.

“Housing options for young people are becoming more and more limited as welfare reforms begin to bite, and those who do need help are often spending too long in limbo in temporary accommodation, which affects their chances of finding and keeping a job or training and can impact on their physical and mental health.

“Mental health services for those falling between children’s and adult services are not well co-ordinated with vulnerable young people falling through the net.

“The report’s findings come directly from those who work with young homeless people, whose outlook is becoming more and demoralised as the combination of austerity cuts and welfare reforms limit the chances for young people to escape from homelessness for good.”

The charity has outlined 13 recommendations it believes can help reverse the trend of youth homelessness.