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Plight of street kids hits home for vanhoe Girls' Grammar School students by Blair Corless, Heidelberg Leader - 5 May 2008

A HARD-hitting documentary on street kids has had the desired effect on Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar School's Year 12 students.
When voting on a cause to support as part of the senior school's annual concert, the student body overwhelmingly backed Kids Under Cover, an organisation devoted to helping homeless youth.

School vice-captain and concert organiser Hasini Jayatissa said many students watched the documentary after it was recommended by their Year 12 co-ordinator.
"There has been a lot of media coverage about homeless youth this year, especially during the recent National Youth Week," Hasini said.
"And because a lot of these youths are the same age as ourselves it really connected."
She said the students hoped to raise $25,000 to help fight youth homelessness through donations, an auction of goods donated by local traders, fundraisers and the concert.
"It's something so terrible that I couldn't begin to imagine what it (being homeless) must be like," Hasini said.
"To come from having a roof over your head and a good education we need to help people who don't have it that good."
The concert, which includes singing, dancing and skits, will be held at the school on Friday, May 16.

Brunswick Professor to rescue homeless teens Brigid O'Connell, Moreland Leader - 21 April 2008

TWICE the number of Australian teenagers are homeless compared with 20 years ago. But Coburg's David MacKenzie has the answers to change this "national disgrace".

Associate Prof MacKenzie, from Swinburne University, has compiled Australia's Homeless Youth, with the Brunswick-based National Youth Commission. It is the the first national independent investigation into youth homelessness since the inquiry by the Human Rights Commission in 1989.

The report notes that on any given night 36,000 young Australians are homeless, with one in two young people turned away from emergency accommodation each night. These facts rile Prof Mackenzie.

"These are the most marginalised Australians, being placed in terrible situations in the early stages of their life because the system is letting them down," he said. "But this is an achievable national goal. We know how to do it, we just need the funding to make it happen."

Prof MacKenzie said more resources needed to be urgently directed to early intervention and prevention services; to keep children at school and connected to their families.

And the financial costs of doing nothing should alarm the community and all tiers of government, he said.
"Rudd handed back $31 million in tax cuts back as disposable income, so part of the economic surplus from our prosperity needs to be used to eliminate homelessness," he said. "We don't see the cost of doing nothing, but when you add up things like health costs, the justice system, and welfare payments, the cost of preventing family homelessness is about $1 billion.
"There are proven programs out there, but they don't have enough resources."

Prof Mackenzie said the National Youth Commission would continue to release more details of its $1 billion 10-year-plan of recommendations in the report, ahead of a Federal Government white paper on youth homelessness, due to be released in September.
To see the report go to www.nyc.net.au

Reconnect targets ‘at risk’ youths Kirsty O'Leary Nambucca Guardian - 17 April 2008

A program to house youths at risk of becoming homeless has been expanded in the Nambucca Shire.

Reconnect Nambucca-Bellingen has set up two houses locally for youths who are on the brink of becoming homeless, which allows them to live independently with positive role models to guide them into the rental market.

This partnership with Community Housing is in addition to five properties put aside for young people to live in, if their family situation breaks down in the Valley.

Reconnect co-ordinator David Stamel said he would like to see the program expanded to include more homes for young people in the shire, and create similar schemes in the Bellingen Shire in the future, if more funding became available.

“We need more accommodation options for people,” he said. “I see Reconnect heading in the direction of supporting more accommodation by working with local real estates and Community Housing.”

The National Youth Commission report into Youth Homelessness, released last week, recommended Reconnect be expanded to cover all areas of NSW as part of a $1 billion fund injection to help solve the issues leading to homelessness.

The housing schemes in place for at-risk youths in Nambucca are for older teens, but Mr Stamel said early intervention was the key to preventing youth homelessness.

Reconnect focuses on teens from 12 to 18 years, to try to prevent them taking to the streets. In the Nambucca and Bellingen Shires, most homeless youths were ‘couch-surfers’, living on the goodwill of friends and family.

The young people do not want to go home, or cannot, because of a family break-down and other factors, and so move around the houses of relatives and friends, sleeping in spare rooms and on couches.

As this pattern continues, the Youth Homelessness Report states a young person’s options get slimmer – they are banned from houses, wear out their welcome, and eventually end up on the streets.

Mr Stamel said Reconnect aimed to step in before the youngsters landed on the streets.

“We see couch-surfing a lot and try to bring down the stress for the families and friends helping them out,” he said.

“If (the youths) feel like they can contribute by buying groceries, or something like that, they don’t feel as guilty about staying, either.

“In time, we help them get on with finishing their education, getting into the workforce and creating an exit plan to set up a house of their own.”

However, mediation is often used between younger children and their parents to try to work out the problems that might cause the ‘couch-surfing’ to occur.

The Reconnect youth workers meet at-risk youths wherever they wish (Reconnect’s office is in Urunga) to discuss their options for staying in a safe, stable environment.

Late last week, a lead tenant volunteered to help youths establish their own home in Macksville.

Mr Stamel said the home would be specifically for indigenous youths, who represent a high proportion of the homeless figures around Australia.

He said rental prices, especially in coastal regions such as the Nambucca Valley, were driving many young people out of the market.

There were no firm figures for the rate of homelessness in young people in the Nambucca Shire. Currently, a study was being undertaken by Bellingen council to calculate the numbers, where they stay and what services they use.

Mr Stamal said he hoped this study could be expanded into the Nambucca Shire to find out the extent of the problem locally.

Lateline Report - April 7 TRANSCRIPT Reporter Michael Turtle - 7 April 2008

TONY JONES: Some grim statistics to be released tomorrow reveal tens of thousands of young Australians are now without a home and it's not just the less well off. The year long inquiry into youth homelessness found all levels of society are affected. Rising rents, family breakdown and drug abuse are forcing more young people onto the streets and into supported accommodation. The report calls for urgent Government action. Youth Affairs Reporter, Michael Turtle.

MICHAEL TURTLE: Toni is 22-years-old and has a three year old daughter. For the last 10 years she hasn't had a place to call her own. Her mother abandoned her at two-months-old and it eventually reached the point where she couldn't live with her father and their partner.

TONI, 22-YEAR-OLD: There was one girl that used bash me and abuse me and everything like that. I just got to the point where I couldn't deal with it anymore. I got kicked out at 12.

MICHAEL TURTLE: Toni moved to Sydney and used drugs and with that came crime. She refused to sleep on the streets and would move between refuges and friends' couches.

TONI: You lose so many things. You lose your clothes you lose everything and your money doesn't last very long. You've just paid your money at one refuge and the other refuge might be more expensive so you're already owing money wherever you go if you move from one to another. It gets tough and tight.

MICHAEL TURTLE: Half of all homeless youth who try to get into emergency accommodation are turned away but Toni ended up at the Oasis Centre in inner city. Run by the Salvation Army it's one of a handful of organisations that offer help to desperate young people.

PAUL MOULDS, OASIS YOUTH CENTRE: We've got kids here with drug and alcohol issues, mental health issues, kids highly traumatised from some of the experiences they've been exposed to on the street and in their family life and those experiences, those scars need some specialist care to heal.

MICHAEL TURTLE: Every night in Australia, 100,000 people will be homeless. A third are under the age of 25 and about 22,000 are teenagers. Disturbingly, the findings from a year-long inquiry to be released tomorrow have found that it's getting worse.

DAVID MACKENZIE, REPORT CO-AUTHOR: Well, it's doubled in 20 years, basically. That's the quantifiable increase that we face.

MICHAEL TURTLE: And it's the young people who are coming to centres like this one in the relatively affluent Sydney suburb of Cronulla who make up much of the increase. They don't necessarily have drug or mental health problems. They're generally homeless because of family breakdown. Often caused by divorce, abuse or personality clashes.

KELLIE CHECKLEY, SHIREWORLD YOUTH SERVICES: In Cronulla, the Sutherland shire you won't see people sleeping on the streets or in doorways, they're couch surfing, they're the hidden face of homelessness.

MICHAEL TURTLE: 18-year-old Lauren moved out because of clashes with her mother, who was mentally ill. For a long time she survived staying with friends. It wasn't easy.

LAUREN, 18-YEAR-OLD: There are friends that offer you places, but to a certain extent, they have parents who look after you and feed you and you feel like an inconvenience and you feel bad and the friends don't know how to put it to you you've outstayed your welcome and everything. It's a bit difficult.

MICHAEL TURTLE: Lauren's biggest struggle has been with money. Tomorrow's report will show that's the case for about a third of young homeless people. And the inquiry has found that rising rents are making the problem more significant.

LAUREN: Whenever most people say that they think of the alcoholic guy in the corner in the city with his bottle in his hand and like garbage bags and everything. But there's so many kids younger than me and everything that have nowhere to stay and they're cold and hungry and they have nowhere to go.

MICHAEL TURTLE: About 70 per cent of young homeless people aren't on the streets or in crisis shelters, they're in supported accommodation or boarding houses. Even so, for most it's a difficult life.

DAVID MACKENZIE: That's not a situation which allows them to continue their schooling for many years. It's a hand to mouth sort of existence, it's a very unstable and transitory existence and if that continues on and on it tends to get worse for them.

MICHAEL TURTLE: The report will identify where the neglect has been over recent years and perhaps not surprisingly it's expected to recommend solutions that aren't cheap.

DAVID MACKENZIE: We're actually paying a cost of not doing things at the present time and that cost is much, much greater than the actual investment cost that we would pay if we actually responded appropriately.

PAUL MOULDS: We haven't been able to get politicians to hear that we are losing young people to the streets. Some young people dying, certainly to the jail and Corrective Services system. And it's because no one's been prepared to do some early intervention work, to do work at this level where we've got a chance to redirect these kids' lives.

MICHAEL TURTLE: The release of the inquiry's findings has been timed to coincide with National Youth Week. That culminates in the Federal Government's youth 2020 summit in Canberra this weekend, where the report authors hope that homelessness will be on the agenda. Michael Turtle. Lateline.

Stateline - Queensland Transcript Youth Homelessness REport, reporter John Taylor - 11 April 2008

JOHN TAYLOR: As Stateline goes to air tonight about 100,000 people will be homeless. About a third will be young people. A national report released this week found that the number of homeless teenagers in Australia has doubled over the past two decades. It's highlighted in Queensland a lack of crisis accommodation centres particularly outside the south east corner.

(JOHN TAYLOR LOOKS AT THE HOMELESS YOUTH)

(FOOTAGE OF FOOD VAN FEEDING THE HOMELESS)

JOHN TAYLOR: This is Thursday night in Brisbane. Everyone here is homeless and hungry.

HELPER: Heaps of ham and vegies and gravy and that sort of thing.

JOHN TAYLOR: Many have been homeless for years. This 27 year old man started living on the streets when he was a teenager.

(JOHN TAYLOR TALKS TO THE HOMELESS) JOHN TAYLOR: What's it like?

HOMELESS MAN: Cold sometimes.

JOHN TAYLOR: Scary too?

HOMELESS MAN: Can be yeah. Not knowing where you're going to get your next blanket, or your next meal, or your next pair of shoes.

JOHN TAYLOR: So what's the future hold for you?

HOMELESS MAN Hopefully a house to raise my little girl.

BEN LOOPY, QUEENSLAND HEALTH: It's a fairly common scene especially given the high prevalence of mental illness and people coming out of prison and that sort of thing. There's nowhere for people to go

JOHN TAYLOR: The bright lights of a growing city beckon the people of Brisbane. But inside this van is a group of people who go to the city for another reason.

(FOOTAGE OF PEOPLE GETTING OUT OF VAN)

JILL MCKAY, BRISBANE YOUTH SERVICE: Um we're looking for young people who are sleeping rough. We might know them they might have accessed our service during the day. They might be not young people that we met; they might be young people that we know.

JOHN TAYLOR: Jill McKay is part of a street based outreach team that regularly heads out into the city to do what they can for the young and homeless. They check unlikely places like the Goodwill Bridge.

JASON FAGG, BRISBANE YOUTH SERVICE: People were actually living under here but bars and stuff were put up and if you look in there you can actually see the stuff still there from where the people were camped out.

JOHN TAYLOR: There are homeless nearby but they are sleeping.

JILL MCKAY: I don't want to disturb them. That's their home for the moment. I'm not going to knock on their door and

JOHN TAYLOR: Brisbane based Father Wally Dethlefs helped co-write a recent national report into Youth Homelessness. He says Queensland's most pressing problem is beds there's not enough government supported accommodation.

FATHER WALLY DETHLEFS, NATIONAL YOUTH COMMISSION: One of our youth shelters here in Brisbane turned away around about 1,500 young people last year because they were full. Another organisation, accommodation organisation which accommodates young people who’ve got high complex needs, for every 10 who apply to get in one gets in, in far north Queensland, a similar thing for a hostel for girls.

JOHN TAYLOR: He says Queensland and Australia needs to spend more money on things like beds, and early intervention programs.

FATHER WALLY DETHLEFS: It seems to me that one fighter plane, one new fighter plane, would cost around about the same amount. A Fighter plane mostly is for death and destruction. I know that it can also be about defence right? The $1B that we might into homeless young people over a 10 year period is for the life of the nation and particularly for the life of powerless and vulnerable young people.

JOHN TAYLOR: This week, support groups and youth workers got together to call on governments to do more.

(FOOTAGE OF VOLUNTEERS HELPING OUT AND BEING SPOKEN TO)

BRISBANE LADY MAYORESS: Homeless that are sleeping rough and in this sort of inclement weather is not necessarily a lifestyle choice.

JOHN TAYLOR: Reece from Caboolture is 17 and he's not sure how long he's been homeless.

(JOHN TAYLOR TALKS TO HOMLESS PERSON REECE)

REECE, - HOMELESS YOUTH: A year, maybe two.

JOHN TAYLOR: What’s it like?

REECE: Hard extremely hard, you basically have to try and survive. You do something wrong and that's it basically.

JOHN TAYLOR: Are you homeless by choice?

REECE: No, I'm not homeless by choice. Mum and dad don't want me back in there's nowhere else for me to go. So I have to live on the streets.

JOHN TAYLOR: For support workers it's tough to have to turn young people away. Robyn Patterson is with a Brisbane Bayside accommodation centre called Babi.

ROBYN PATTERSON, BAYSIDE ACCOMM. CENTRE: Babi itself last year had 574 young people ask for accommodation. Now we could accommodate just 43 young people. That's a two and a half times turn away rate.

(JOHN TALKING TO ROBYN PATTERSON)

JOHN TAYLOR: And how does she feel about turning people away.

ROBYN PATTERSON: Yeah, it's not good. (Cries)

JOHN TAYLOR: Warwick looks like a typical country town but a 2004 survey revealed a serious problem.

(JOHN TAYLOR TALKS TO PAM BURLEY FROM SOUTHERN DOWNS COUNCIL)

PAM BURLEY, SOUTHERN DOWNS COUNCIL: We discovered that at the point of the survey we had 17 young people on that day who had self identified as being homeless.

JOHN TAYLOR: So that was 2004 we’re in 2008 now so what’s changed?

PAM BURLEY: There are still no places for young people in Warwick.

JOHN TAYLOR: Why?

PAM BURLEY: Um, we haven't been able to convince anyone who has got the where withall to support us financially.

JOHN TAYLOR: Maria Leebeek from the Queensland Youth Housing coalition says Warwick isn't alone.

MARIA LEEBEEK, YOUTH HOUSING COALITION: I think Warwick is an excellent example of what happens in every or most rural communities in Queensland. There is only three youth services west of the Great Dividing Range specifically for young people.

JOHN TAYLOR: This is a part of society full of heartbreak and cruelty, but there are highs as well like when Maria Leebeek met a man she helped years ago.

MARIA LEEBEEK: The first thing he said to me I’ve got a full time job, and I've got a place to live. And how are the kids? You know and that's really important to say "I did it I’ve done well". And I think that for me is probably the inspiration that keeps me going when you do hear and see young people like that coming back to you and saying hey you know it's worth it, it was all worth it.

JOHN TAYLOR: How many funerals have you been to?

MARIA LEEBEEK: Well, I probably don't want to.. yeah I've been to a few.

It could be me Vibewire online article - June 20 2008

Every night there are 22,000 homeless teenagers, a tragic figure for a country as prosperous as Australia. YASMINE FATHY investigates why this is still such a prevalent problem, and what we should be doing to change it.

A thin young man with gaunt cheeks, sits in a chair. His hair is uncombed, and his face is exhausted. He hasn’t eaten in four days, and has been walking barefoot in the streets telling people he is John the Baptist.

Quietly he says, “My name is Beau Porter and I am dead.”

On any given night in Australia there are 36,000 homeless young people. Abused, neglected, and traumatised, they have been suffering silently for years. Now a three legged campaign that includes a report, a documentary and an education initiative aims to raise awareness of their plight.

Beau’s story is part of the Oasis observational documentary about youth homelessness, which chronicles the life of homeless Australians at the Salvation Army’s Oasis youth refuge. Oasis is run by Captain Paul Moulds, a man who has worked tirelessly, and anonymously for years to help Sydney’s homeless youth.

It captures youth homelessness in all it’s gritty reality of drugs, violence, criminality and emotional trauma.

"We wanted all the key issues surrounding homelessness to come out and so, the characters were ways of telling that,” explains director of the documentary, Ian Darling.

The documentary focuses on the lives of seven homeless people, each telling a compelling story of life as a homeless Australian.

“I guess we didn’t go necessarily into the goriest, or the most aggressive or whatever,” explains Mr Darling. “We came up with something that told the story, yet it gave enough hope for the audience.”

The documentary was launched with the release of the National Youth Commission inquiry into youth homelessness, during National Youth Week in April 2008.. The report was funded by the Caledonia Foundation, and is the first national independent inquiry into youth homelessness since the Burdekin Inquiry in 1989.

“The problem got worse, and gradually it got to the point we felt that we’re at a turning point, we need to have another look,” explains Associate Professor David MacKenzie, of Swinburne University, one of the four commissioners responsible for the report.

“The government wasn’t doing what we thought they should be doing.”

The report aimed to document the history of policy, programs, and initiatives by Federal, State and Territory governments to assist homeless youth. It also wanted to identify the issues that prevent homeless young people from connecting with the wider community, and to report on the existing services and programs

According to the report, the current situation is very tragic. Despite the fact that Australia’s economy has been consistently booming, the last 20 years saw the number of homeless youth reach 22,000. In fact, more than one third of the 100,000 homeless Australians are teenagers (aged 12-18) or young adults (aged 18-25).

The report detailed many of the causes of homelessness such as drug use, family breakdown, housing affordability, poverty, and mental health problems. It also asked the Australian government to develop a National Homelessness Strategy and Action Plan.

While the report provided the long needed information on this growing problem, the documentary put a face to the statistics.

Beau for example, was raised in Queensland with his three siblings, after his father left when he was 13 years old. He is one of the 49% of youths who left home after a family break-up. His mother tried to make ends meet in a small home, and they suffered from financial difficulties.

His mother was a good woman, and unlike many other homeless youth, there was no parental abuse in Beau’s story. However they did disagree often, and the arguments would end up in shouting wars.

Then one day he left.

“It wasn’t like walking out and leaving and never coming back,” he remembers. “It was a gradual leaving of home, like I go for a week, and then come back for a couple of days,” he continues.

It took him four months to leave home entirely. Beau, moved around staying at friends places, sleeping at men’s refuges, and in desperate times, under bridges.

Like the 6 per cent of homeless youth, he also battled depression, and at the age of 21 tried to commit suicide. Following his suicide attempt he moved to Sydney, and met Captain Moulds, but continued to live in temporary shelters.

But one day it got too much, and he suffered from a psychotic episode, which resulted in the haunting scene in the documentary, where he walks into Paul’s office, sits down, and tells him he feels dead.

“I think that psychosis was a combination of a lot of stress, taking a lot of pot, and also anti-depressant medication that I was on as well,” he remembers.

Paul, helped Beau go to the hospital where he spent nine weeks in psychiatric care. Although, the incident is one of the most disturbing scenes in the Oasis documentary, Beau does not remember it.

“For about six weeks I didn’t have any memories, there are flashes that come up every now and again,” he says.

He does remember though, the help that Paul, and the Oasis centre provided, and has vowed to help other homeless youth. His story, is what the NYC report calls the “process” of homelessness- becoming homeless, being homeless, and then re-establishing a livelihood and a place in the community.

He, now, has his own independent housing, and works along with Paul in Oasis. Life, he says, is not too bad anymore.

“Pretty much ever since I met Paul, I did a lot of growing,” says Beau. “I feel that I’ve got myself together… I’m pretty much independent, so I am a contributing member to the community now instead of being a drain on the resources,” he says.

But there are many out there who are still at risk. The NYC report highlighted the importance of early intervention, especially in schools. With that in mind, this week, the Caledonia Foundation has donated a copy of the documentary to approximately 3,200 secondary schools in Australia as part of its education and outreach component. The “Oasis Education Guide,” was launched at Parliament House, on the 28th of May by Tanya Plibersek, the Federal Minister for Housing.

The documentary will supplement a summary of the NYC report, and a study-guide which highlights it’s curriculum relevance.

“We felt the next generation really needed to embrace the whole homeless thing,” explains Mr Dalring, who is also the chairman of the Caledonia Foundation.

Although, the lives of the youth in the documentary may seem worlds apart from that of the students, there are still many similarities. The students, says Mr Darling, will appreciate their privileged status when they see the suffering of their peers in Oasis, and they will also be able to relate.

“They will see that so many of them are in the same age bracket,” he explains. “So I guess they will say gee these guys are teenagers like me, and that they are human beings…and it could be me.”

The additional study guide, which is owned by Metro Magazine, aims to help today’s media savvy students to engage with many of the questions that the film raised. Through exercises and role playing games, the guide encourages them to emphasize with the characters in the film, and the challenges they face.

“The fundamental aim is to lock [the students] in. Where would you go, what would you do, how would you cope?’ explains Marguerite O'Hara, the guide’s author.

So far, the schools have responded to the idea enthusiastically. Tony Weiss, the head of the Physical Development, Health & Physical Education (PDHPE), at Kincoppal Rose Bay School of the Sacred Heart, can’t wait to show it to his Year 10 students in term four.

He has also encouraged the school’s boarding school students to view the film when it aired on ABC, under supervision.

“Initially some of them were confronted with the language and some of the violence that was exhibited in the program,” he says. “But it’s obviously very necessary for the teacher to...explain to the students the context that the film was made,” he says.

The education initiative is vital because often the problem starts during school years.

“In most schools it won’t be a big problem,” says Professor MacKenzie. But if every school has one or two students at risk, then the problem becomes significant.

“If you add that up across thousands of schools, you do end up with thousands upon thousands of young people,” he continues.

Beau points, that the documentary, can help the students who are experiencing the same problems to seek help before it’s too late.

“And also for the people who don’t have these issues, it may open their eyes and soften their hearts a little bit to the homeless people," he says.

No one knows the importance of school intervention more than Beau. After leaving home, he continued to go to school. Although, he says, some of his teachers were aware there he was experiencing problem at home, no one guessed that he was spending nights under a bridge.

“I never did homework, the only thing that got me through school was tests, exams, and stuff like that,” he says. “I am a pretty smart person.”

It’s a series of events, often tragic that leads young people to leave their home, their family, and live a meagre existence on the streets and in shelters. Despite this, many people still think of them as criminals rather than the victims they really are.

“But people look at them and go hey what are you doing, you are sleeping on the streets, you are not trying to better your life,” says Beau. “And those people are going through hell, and it’s why they are there right now they don’t know what to do.”

Hopefully, times will change. Mr Weiss points that his students are now becoming interested in the problem, and want to work with homeless youth as part of the school’s Social Justice program.

Paul is also getting the recognition he deserves.

“Many of the local community members, and shop owners were wanting to close down Oasis,” says Mr Darling. “And there’s been a total paradigm shift, of them saying now we understand what you are doing and would like to encourage you.”

It has also helped Beau’s family understand him more. While it was shocking to his family, it has helped them understand the ordeal he’s been through.

“They were shocked, most people who knew me were,” he says. “They look at it and they saw who I am now, they are actually very proud of me.”

He is finishing his community welfare certificate, and volunteers in church. He has finally found a place where he can belong.

“My journey is a testament that people can change given the opportunity, and the right resources.”

Youth homelessness has doubled: report Sydney Morning Herald - April 8

Federal Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek says both sides of politics have failed abused youth, and has called for fresh bipartisanship on the issue of youth homelessness. "I don't think anyone in the Australian community can be happy that the rates of child abuse and neglect in this country are rising," Ms Plibersek told ABC TV. "I think they're failures of both sides of politics. "I think they're failures of our community."
A new report from the National Youth Commission has found the number of homeless youths, aged between 12 and 18, across the country has doubled to 22,000 in the past two decades. At the report's launch on Tuesday, Ms Plibersek said an extra $150 million in government funding that had been committed to building more accommodation was a "down payment" on a solution for the future.
The minister said she believed there were plenty of opposition politicians willing to help. "I know a lot of people in the now opposition ... who are people of good faith and good will who would be as shocked as anyone about the huge numbers of homeless people," she told ABC TV. "I hope that they'll be able to work with us co-operatively," she said.

Just say no to drugs, and to lazy stereotypes about junkies
The Wry Side, Emma Tom - April 17

IN government television campaigns, just saying no to drugs is a simple business, an easy decision made by well-fed, well-clothed young people who just want to have a good time.

"Hmmm. Friday night again. It's tempting to try ice, but picking imaginary scabs in nightclub toilets doesn't really go with my new flamingo zippered leggings (heroin chic is so last century). I know, I'll go bowling and have a couple of shandies instead."

In the real world, or at least the world depicted in an extraordinary new documentary, The Oasis, suggesting it's simple to just say no to drugs is a joke.

"Hmmm. Tuesday morning again. It's tempting to spend a couple of hours straight, but that'll mean dwelling on the fact that Mum was a junkie hooker, Dad flogged me to a pulp and now I sleep on a vomit and faeces-smeared footpath. I know: I'll inject some more heroin into what's left of my 17-year-old veins in the hope that for a few lousy hours I'll get to feel like I'm dead."

There are no justs when it comes to saying no to numbing substances under these circumstances. There are rock bottoms so far down they'd give you vertigo. There are deprivations we in zippered legging land couldn't possibly imagine. There is Everest upon Everest upon Everest.

Just say no? Just say no? Yeah, right. And all we need for peace in the Middle East is for the Arabs and the Israelis to just get along.
The Oasis, which charts two terrible years in the life of a Salvation Army youth refuge in inner Sydney, should be mandatory viewing for anyone who thinks youth homelessness and drug addiction are the results of stupid choices made by the weak-willed and overindulged. These kids' earliest memories are of beatings and brutalisations, of watching their parents shoot smack or do strangers for drug money.
Sure, they have choices about the way they live their lives. But to suggest these choices are the same as those available to kiddies who don't spend their formative years sleeping on alleyway mattresses is bullshit. Offensive, patronising, cop-out bullshit.

The other people who should have their eyelids pinned back Clockwork Orange-style in front of The Oasis are those moral campaigners who rail about the wickedness du jour while Australia's 22,000 homeless teens burn.

As Sydney's religious elite bicker about whether God hates homosexual High Court judge Michael Kirby, Paul Moulds of the Oasis Youth Support Network is bringing recovering drug addicts and their newborn babies into his home while he tries to find places with roofs for these terribly vulnerable new families to live.

He's sending cleaning crews to young people's flats so that when they get out of jail, detox or the asylum they don't walk straight back into the abyss.
He's attending junkie births and speaking at junkie funerals and buying street kids breakfast and driving them to court and deflecting psychotic rages and serving fried rice from the back of vans and never, ever giving up on anyone.
Moulds, an exemplar of the true Christian spirit, knows how ugly his abused and abusive charges look from the outside.
But he doesn't withdraw his support or compassion when yet again they fail to turn up for rehab or tell him they've finally found a quality boyfriend because this one smokes rather than injects ice.
"Every kid deserves a 13th chance," he shrugs with that gentle, generous smile. He sees potential in the people polite society dismisses as human detritus, accepting that salvation for these souls is simply doing a little better. And he steadfastly refuses to preach or judge: "We can throw our hands up in moral outrage and say this shouldn't be, this is wrong or else we can ..."

Ah yes, this magnificent man is king of the "or else we cans". If only more people would just say no to the lazy stereotypes and puffed-up indignation and join him in the church of actually making a difference.

A Long Way from Home by Anna Thompson, Pipeline - July 16 2008

Experts on the subject have described it as a national disgrace, but, whatever label you give it, youth homelessness is a massive problem in Australian society. Over the past 20 years, the number of teenagers in our communities who spend the night looking for shelter has doubled to 22,000. Despite Australia enjoying a sustained period of economic prosperity, latest statistics suggest that for many this is not the “lucky country” and that not nearly enough is being done to care for our vulnerable children. With the release earlier this month of the National Youth Commission’s report on youth homelessness, there is renewed hope the issue will be back on the agenda. In a three-part report, Pipeline journalist ANNA THOMPSON examines youth homelessness, reveals the renewed campaign to address the problem and looks at how The Salvation Army has recommitted itself to being part of the solution.
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No place like home Stephen Lunn, Sydney Morning Herald - April 8 2008

TEENAGERS Hope Walter and Alyssa Coulter live in different cities but their fractured lives run parallel.

For Alyssa Coulter, 18, life has improved but she remains estranged from her family.
Like so many in their world there is the inevitable broken home, furious arguments with a parent or step-parent, an ultimatum, then the deep trauma of becoming one of Australia's growing number of homeless youth.
For many of the nation's bleak army of 22,000 teenage homeless, a path out seems unattainable. But after years of despair living among some of the nation's most marginalised, there is at least a ray of light for 19-year-old Hope from Melbourne, who has recently moved back home with her mother, and for Sydney's Alyssa, 18, trying for a high school education and permanent accommodation.
They may end up two of the lucky ones, but their stories remain grim. Both talk of feelings of utter worthlessness as they dossed on friends' sofas and slept rough before finding support services.
Hope recalls the "massive fight" she had at 17 with her father about her new boyfriend, who was homeless. "He said I had to make a choice, him or my boyfriend, so I ended up on the streets," Hope says. "At first we slept in Flagstaff gardens and then for quite a few months on the porch of a bowls club. "The people who ran the bowls club were kind. They lent us one of those big gas heater things so we could keep warm."

Alyssa's descent into the murky world of teenage homelessness came earlier.
"I moved out from my mum and stepdad at 13. My parents drank and there was domestic violence. I don't why I was singled out but I got pushed out of the family," she says. "I went to one of my mates and lived on the couch for a month. Then I was on the streets for a year, sleeping inside food trolleys in a park.
"When I lived on the street I was stealing cars and stuff, using drugs, heroin. I felt like I was worthless, that no one really cared, and every day was just another day to survive.
"But there was also a funny little family of us street kids."

These two young women are emblematic of young homeless nationwide, according to a critical new report entitled Australia's Homeless Youth, to be released by the National Youth Commission today.
"Almost half of homeless youth who sought help from (emergency accommodation services) said that relationship breakdown with parents or step-parents was the main reason for their homelessness," the report notes.

Funded by the Caledonia Foundation, a benevolent group dedicated to the sustainability of young Australians, the report is only the second to be conducted independently of government. After conducting hearings in all states and territories during the past year, including taking evidence from 319 individuals and participating in four policy forums, it concludes that Australia is falling significantly short in its duty of care towards the nation's most vulnerable.

Since the first independent report, Brian Burdekin's seminal 1989 study Our Homeless Children, the number of teenage homeless has doubled to 22,000. Of the 100,000 homeless Australians on any given night, 36 per cent are 25 or younger, a far cry from the stereotype of the old wino under the bridge. Many are products of the state care system.
Of the young people seeking a bed in emergency accommodation, only one in every two will sleep in sheets.
NYC commissioner David Mackenzie, an associate professor at Swinburne University's Institute for Social Research, says the statistics are unacceptable given the good economic conditions since the 1990s.
"Since Burdekin, the numbers of homeless young people has pretty much doubled," Mackenzie says. "The irony is that in that time we've had improving prosperity, a strong economy, unemployment has come down markedly in an improving labour market. It's very sobering."
Mackenzie points out 22,000 teenagers aren't all living in alleys and on park benches across the country. The definition of homelessness including those "couch surfing" with friends or acquaintances or in boarding houses without security of tenure.
The inquiry found young people quickly lose connection with mainstream society when they become homeless, which is why bolstering early intervention programs is crucial among the NYC's recommendations.

NYC commissioner Wally Dethlefs, a Brisbane Catholic priest who has worked with the homeless for 35 years, says more young homeless people suffer a complex range of issues compared with 20 years ago.
"I'm talking about young people excluded from schools, with mental health problems, in contact with juvenile justice and child protection systems and dealing with drug and alcohol problems," Dethlefs says.
"Some young people, a lot more than there used to be, have all these issues at once. And mental health issues have come far more to the fore in recent times. At the time of Burdekin, it was thought homelessness may cause mental health problems for younger people, but I'd say that is definite now."
The report finds there's a high cost to society in failing to deal promptly with the symptoms and effects of youth homelessness, in the order of $474 million a year.
"Think already of the increased security around homes, the higher insurance premiums people must deal with, the extra police required, the greater load placed on the court system and on the jails," Dethlefs says. "All of that will worsen if we don't deal with that issue now."

Burdekin addressed this issue in launching the inquiry in March last year. "One of the hardest things we had to do in the original report was to convince government, the pragmatists, the bean counters in Treasury and finance that the costs of not addressing the issues are much higher than the costs of having appropriate policy settings."

The new NYC report sets out a platform for reform, calling on government to provide an additional $1 billion through 10 years to provide additional housing for young homeless people, bolster existing early intervention programs that work well but remain too thin on the ground, and implement other youth services in areas including employment and health. It may find a receptive ear in Kevin Rudd, who has become a champion of the homeless since taking over as Prime Minister. During the election campaign he quietly visited several homeless shelters, and one of his first acts in government was to demand all his MPs do likewise. During the election he pledged $150 million for the creation of new places in crisis shelters.
In January, Rudd announced a white paper canvassing long-term options to reduce the homeless problem during the next decade, putting one of the nation's most experienced welfare advocates, Brotherhood of St Laurence head Tony Nicholson, in charge.
"I don't want to live in a country where we simply discard people," Rudd said at the time. "I don't want to live in a country where we accept people begging on the streets is somehow acceptable to the Australian way of life."

The NYC report says while relationship breakdown with parents is the prime cause of youth homelessness, many remain homeless because they can't make the transition from emergency or medium-term accommodation into the long-term rental market. It also launches into a trenchant criticism of the state care system and calls for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to launch a federal inquiry into the system.
"One-third of young people leaving state care are case-managed into homelessness services, highlighting the inadequacy of the leaving care process," the report finds. "A recent study reported that 42 per cent of homeless adults in (emergency accommodation) had been in state care and protection programs when they were young. The fact that years later so many are in adult homelessness services demonstrates that the system has failed many young people."
The report also demands a trebling of the funding for the successful early intervention Reconnect program that began in 2001 (and has led to a significant drop in teen homeless since that date, according to the NYC report).

After living with her boyfriend in a crowded boarding house organised through the Frontyard youth service in Melbourne, Hope's relationship with her boyfriend ended. "We used to fight all the time, living together in that atmosphere," she says.
She credits her turnaround to resisting drugs during her time among the homeless and to the numerous counsellors that saw her through that bleak time. "Without that I don't know where I'd be, but I know I got a lot of good advice about how to rebuild my relationships with my parents. I'm living with Mum and I'm on good terms with Dad so I can go to his house, which is near the city, if I get stuck in town late at night," she says.

Alyssa has no apparent road back to her family. "It was really hard to give up heroin, I'd get off for a couple of days, then go back, then (get off) for a couple of weeks, then go back. But I'm never going back now," she says. She is living at the Oasis youth centre in Sydney's Surry Hills and doing Year 11 at its accredited course. "I did (years) 8, 9 and 10 in two years," she says. "I'm also getting close to having my own apartment, too, so if that comes off, it'd be great."
The girls, similar to the other young homeless men and women to whom The Australian spoke, who are working their way through the system, are inordinately fragile and incredibly resilient. The NYC report, and the experience of the commissioners who listened to all the evidence across the country, makes it clear these young people need government and community support.

VULNERABLE AND MARGINALISED

"There's no doubt these are tough kids. They come from tough backgrounds and they're tough to deal with. They've got mental health issues, they've got drug and alcohol addictions, some of them have spent their whole lives in state care, some of them have been abused, some tortured, some neglected badly. But because they're tough kids doesn't mean we should put them in the too hard basket and believe that nothing can ever change." Paul Moulds, Salvation Army

"There is absolutely no excuse for us to be in a situation where we can talk about national policies on water and the environment but we can't talk about some sort of co-ordinated and effective national policy for the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and marginalised people in our own community." Brian Burdekin, National Inquiry into Youth Homelessness in 1989 author

"The way we respond to the needs of ourmost vulnerable and marginalised is a litmus test for the health of our community. For too long we have sidelined the plight of Australia's homeless youth, hoping perhaps that they would somehow disappear." Ian Darling, Caledonia Foundation chairman

"Apart from the practical discomfort of moving around, experiencing homelessness is emotional hell. Homeless young people feel scared, frustrated, embarrassed, helpless and vulnerable. Seen as different from other young people, they have a growing sense that there is no hope for them; they become depressed, angry or both. They yearn for what everyone else takes for granted: a place to belong and people who care for them."

David Eldridge, National Youth Commission chairman

Homeless youth: a nation's shame Adele Horin, Sydney Morning Herald - April 8 2008

YOUTH homelessness is at alarming levels despite 15 years of economic growth, and deserves the same priority as climate change and water supply on the nation's policy agenda, a major inquiry warns.
The first national investigation into youth homelessness since the Burdekin inquiry 20 years ago has found the number of homeless teenagers has doubled to 22,000 since 1989, and one in two homeless youths is turned away from emergency shelters every night because services are full.
When young adults aged 18 to 25 are counted in, then number rises to 36,000.
The National Youth Commission, which releases its searing report today after a year-long inquiry, has called for a national commitment to eliminate youth homelessness over the next 25 years. It says this should start with a $100 million increase in government funding over the next three years, and an extra $1 billion over the decade for new forms of youth housing, boarding school options for indigenous children, early intervention programs, higher welfare payments, crisis accommodation and drug, alcohol and mental health programs.
It also warns that Australia is on the brink of a new explosion in the numbers of homeless youth because of the housing affordability crisis.
The report, Australia's Homeless Youth, makes 80 recommendations aimed at promoting a long-term, bipartisan commitment in place of the current piecemeal and unco-ordinated approach to the crisis.
It says the country is at a watershed because it now has the first evidence it is possible to reduce youth homelessness. In the past five years, effective early intervention programs have reduced youth homelessness from 26,000 in 2001, but the programs reach only a third of the young people who need them.
"We are at a turning point," said David MacKenzie, one of the four commissioners and a Swinburne University academic who has helped pioneer a census of homeless youth. Without a huge national effort, youth homelessness would worsen because of soaring rents and a lack of affordable housing, he said.
The commission - also comprising Father Wally Dethlefs, who sat on the Burdekin inquiry, Major David Eldridge of the Salvation Army and Narelle Clay, chief executive of a youth and family service - urges the Labor government to spend a third of the $150 million it has already promised for housing the homeless on youths aged 12 to 24, in line with their representation among the nation's homeless population.
The report paints a heartbreaking picture of children and young people who are the fall-out of three decades of social and economic change, of families not up to the task of child-rearing because of poverty, mental illness, violence, substance abuse, divorce and neglect; of warring blended families and families at breaking point because of angry, rebellious adolescents.
Major Eldridge told the Herald sexual and physical abuse by step-parents was also a significant issue. "We should be up in arms about it. It is not just happening in indigenous communities."
The inquiry, which held hearings across the nation, was told by the manager of a youth refuge that "each young person has experienced the erosion or defeat of a significant relationship, usually with an adult who in an ideal world has the role of providing unconditional love and care Some of these relationships can be restored and some will not be, and some should not be."
The report calls for a "radical national review" by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission into the failure of state care systems to adequately help children and adolescents who cannot live with their parents, and to provide after-care services to young adults who leave state care.
Major Eldridge said Australia had a sorry history of under-resourcing its services for children. "Thirty years ago I worked in children's homes - tragic places with dormitories for 15 boys - and we chose to heavily under-resource them, and to under-value what children and young people were saying about their lives," he said. "We are paying the price now. In 20 years' time will people again ask: 'Why didn't you do something different?"'
The inquiry, independently financed by the Caledonia Foundation, sets out a 10-point "road map" for the Federal Government that begins with the development of a national homeless action plan to eliminate the problem by 2030.
Among the recommendations are a new form of housing for independent young people; a trebling of funding to the Reconnect program; an extra $50 million a year for emergency refuges; an immediate injection of $20 million for drug and alcohol services; support for parents who take in their children's homeless friends; more public housing; and a national review of welfare services in schools.

States throw youth in care on to streets, inquiry finds Melanie Christiansen - April 8 2008

YOUTH homelessness in Australia has reached crisis point, with 22,000 teenagers homeless every night and a potential "explosion" in those numbers ahead, partly driven by failures in state care systems. A year-long inquiry by the National Youth Commission has found the extent of teenage homeless has doubled in nearly two decades, since then human rights commissioner Brian Burdekin released his landmark report on the problem. In a major new report, to be launched by Professor Burdekin today, the commission describes the extent of youth homelessness in Australia now as "a national disgrace". It finds 100,000 Australians are homeless on any given night, with at least 36,000 aged from 12 to 25. But it warns emergency accommodation services are "so inadequate" that only 14 per cent of homeless people have access to a bed. "Every night, one in two young people who seek a bed ... is turned away because services are full," the report says. "This is totally unacceptable in a country as prosperous as Australia." The inquiry, which held 21 days of hearings in all states, found there were "significant barriers" to reducing homelessness, including a diminishing supply of affordable housing. It also blasted "inadequacies" in state care and protection systems, warning that serious issues had been raised about the treatment of vulnerable young people. According to the report, "cases of systemic failure were too numerous" to be considered isolated. Evidence from the inquiry's Melbourne hearings indicated a third of young people leaving state care were "case managed into homelessness services". Combined with a sharp increase in the number of children in state care ( doubling to 27,000 in a decade ) the report predicted more teenagers in care would inevitably end up homeless. "If urgent action is not taken, these pressures could lead to an explosion in the numbers of homeless youth," it said. The report called for an immediate Human Rights Commission inquiry into the problems of young people in state care. It also demanded state governments urgently increase staffing of their care and protection agencies and provide more help to teenagers leaving their charge. "If we are serious about addressing the homelessness of the most alienated and damaged young people in our community then it is imperative that we rigorously examine and reform our state care systems," the report said. To help turn around youth homelessness, the report has recommended a $1 billion investment over 10 years. That would pay for more early intervention programs, increased emergency accommodation with better-paid workers to help stop high staff turnover, improved services for those with mental health or drug and alcohol problems and better education and job placement programs. "(Youth homelessness) has just slipped off the national agenda," said Father Wally Dethlefs, a member of the inquiry and a Catholic priest based in Brisbane. "One 11-year-old girl said to me 'I am a nothing, I am a nobody. It doesn't matter what anybody does to me or what I do to anybody else.' "That's the despair."

Homeless ranks swell to 100,000 Steve Connolly and Hannah Davies - April 6 2008

AUSTRALIAN political leaders will be forced to confront a damning report this week revealing the country's youth homelessness shame. The National Youth Commission inquiry will deliver its findings on Tuesday after a year-long investigation into the crisis, with a 10-point plan to spend almost $1 billion to tackle the problem. The report reveals that despite Australia's increased prosperity over the past two decades, the number of homeless youths had doubled.
The inquiry follows a 1989 investigation into youth homelessness by the then Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commissioner Brian Burdekin. Inquiry head Prof David Mackenzie, from Swinburne University's Institute for Social Research in Melbourne, said governments at all levels had "not done enough". "When I look back over almost 20 years I'm somewhat underwhelmed by the response to the Burdekin report because it wasn't followed up with any sort of planned approach nationally," he said. More than 100,000 Australians live on the street, a third are under 25, a quarter live in Queensland.
Angela Barnes, executive manager of Brisbane Youth Services, said homelessness had become more common in the past 20 years, and governments had failed to take action. "They need to realise that these are not just homeless people, they are amazing young people and they just need more investment in them," she said. The service, run from Church St in Fortitude Valley, aims to help people get back on their feet through free meals and a training and employment project. Fifty people a day, on average, walk through the doors. "It's difficult for people to imagine how hard it is to be homeless," Ms Barnes said. "If you're hungry, you can't think about anything else, and once you've satisfied that you have to think about where you will live and how to get counselling for trauma. Only then will you be able to think about a job."
Natasha Attard, 22, slept rough after running away from home at the age of 15. Now she lives in single-parent accommodation at Windsor, in Brisbane's north. "It gets harder to survive on the streets every year because a lot of abandoned buildings have been demolished, which forces people to sleep under bridges and in parks," she said. "When I was living rough I stayed in a group for safety. The streets are a dangerous place at night."
Queensland-based NYC commissioner Father Wally Dethlefs said early intervention and finding ways to reconnect young people with their families was the best way to reduce youth homelessness. "Turn off the tap of homelessness by doing the prevention stuff. Until we do that it's going to get worse and worse." The NYC inquiry held 21 days of hearings nationwide and heard evidence from 319 witnesses as well as receiving 91 written submissions.

Open hearts for the youngest on the streets
Erik Jensen, Sydney Morning Herald - April 5 2008

PAUL MOULDS began working with homeless people more than 20 years ago, before the 1989 Burdekin Inquiry into youth homelessness. Since then, the number of homeless teenagers has doubled in Australia.
Of the 100,000 people whom the Australian Bureau of Statistics estimates are homeless each night, about 36,000 are thought to be under the age of 25 and 10,000 under 12. Every night, one in two young people who seeks support accommodation will be turned away.
"The faces change but the stories I hear are the same," Captain Moulds, the director of the Oasis Youth Support Network, said. "Torment, abuse, neglect - they were the same stories [20 years ago] but the figures just show we could do more."
Captain Moulds is one of many youth workers who gave evidence last year at the National Youth Commission's inquiry into youth homelessness. Its findings will be issued on Tuesday.
Since the hearings, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, pushed the issue of wider homelessness onto the political agenda in January. The Rudd Government's first white paper - to be prepared by Brotherhood of St Laurence executive director Tony Nicholson - will deal with homelessness, for which $150 million was promised in the lead-up to the election.
"You can't put your finger on one thing," Captain Moulds said, of what caused homelessness. "Some people have mental health issues, some have family issues, some have fallen out of state care. It is not about material things; it is mainly about the quality of relationships in families - leaving, without the financial basis or the emotional basis."
Captain Moulds was 19 when he began as an outreach worker in Kings Cross and has run the Oasis Youth Support Network in Surry Hills for 12 years. In the two years that Sascha Ettinger Epstein spent making a documentary about the program at Oasis, to be aired on ABC1 on Thursday, she said she struggled to comprehend his optimism and support for children straying from his programs.
"There is a massive emotional void in the kids' lives and they look for someone who is going to be there consistently," she said. "Paul is worse than the Energizer Bunny. He just perpetually has empathy: that unconditional love that you just want from a parent."
Her assessment was true for Beau Berry-Porter, who became homeless when he was about 13 and credits Captain Moulds for the stable housing in which he now lives. Though he left home thinking he could look after himself, last year he suffered a psychotic episode and he says the decision to leave is not one children can properly make.
"You can grow up but your priorities change," he said. "You can't have the successful life of a job and a family and those things. But once you get that stable accommodation you can focus on those other things."

Homeless youth crisis 'a national disgrace' Nine MSN Staff - April 8 2008

Figures released in a new inquiry show Australia's homeless youth crisis has doubled over the past 20 years, with 22,000 teenagers sleeping on the streets every night.
Australia's Homeless Youth Report, from the National Youth Commission, claims that of Australia's 100,000 people that are homeless on any given night, more than a third are aged 12-25.
But just a big a problem is the lack services available to the homeless.
The Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) services can only provide 14 per cent a bed on any given night, with one in two young people turned away because services are already overfull.
"It is a national disgrace that there are twice as many homeless young Australians now than in 1989 when the Human Right Commission undertook its landmark inquiry," David MacKenzie of the National Youth Commission said.
"No young person should be should be homeless in a country as prosperous as Australia."
The independent report is aiming to jolt both the government and communities into action to take on what is becoming a perpetuating problem, with the current housing affordability situation threatening to force even more onto the streets.
"The way we respond to the needs of our most vulnerable and marginalised is a litmus test for the health of our community," Ian Darling, chairman of the philanthropic Caledonia Foundation, said at the launch of the inquiry last year.
"Our homeless youth deserve a dignified, whole-of-community response.
The report identified four main objectives to help the eradication of youth homelessness: prevention, intervention, supporting young people in need and stopping those assisted from falling back into homelessness.
It also suggested a National Homelessness Strategy and Action Plan be developed and implemented to set our goals in the fight and reach them.
"A total investment of around $100 million in new funding is needed in the first three years," the report said in conclusion. "Beyond that the rate of expenditure will need to increase by approximately $20 million each year, for at least 10 years."
That figure will equate to $1 billion in funding required over the next decade.
"The onus doesn't lie with governments alone — we all have a role to play," Mr Darling said. "Government support, joined with the strategic private assistance of philanthropic foundations and corporations, will be imperative to achieving our ambitious goal of eradicating youth homelessness in Australia."

There's no place like home Erik Jensen, Sydney Morning Herald - April 8 2008

Nearly 40,000 young people are homeless across the country each night, writes Erik Jensen.
John wakes in the passageway where he has slept for the past week - feet cold without shoes and his eyes aching from the florescent lights he cannot switch off, from the nervous half-sleep of the street. The packet of sultanas he pulls from his bag is breakfast. "Like school," he says. "Little lunch."
John has been homeless, on and off, since he was eight. He is one of 36,000 young people deemed homeless across the country each night - part of a minority who sleep on the streets, with most finding their way onto couches or into refuges.
John has reached a point of chronic homelessness that the National Youth Commission's Inquiry into Youth Homelessness, published today, says can be ended by exit strategies and post-vention support.
The report, commissioned by the Caledonia Foundation, found that about $1 billion in funding was needed to break the youth homelessness cycle over the next decade. It says that even though the number of homeless youth has doubled since the Burdekin inquiry in 1989, intervention programs are working and the issue is at a point where the high numbers of homeless children can be slashed.
Young people from the refuge where John once stayed, before he was ejected after a violent outburst, come down a little later. They bring him a cup of tea and cannabis for the first bong of the morning.
"I see myself - not this year, but in longer years - to get what I want," John says just after 2am, walking the streets to stay awake. "First thing is a house, living simple, just a family. A house, for me, is for a family [but] I haven't lived in a house for ages."
The goals form a common checklist among homeless youth - lists that centre on minor details, fragments remembered from childhood.
Laura has been homeless since she was 13. She was watching television when she asked why her family was so different and says her mother told her to leave that night. A year later she was in rehabilitation.
She has three wishes. "A clean house," she says, while waiting to obtain drugs outside a mens' shelter. "A kitchen that's got food in the fridge - and juice. That's what I remember about a normal home."
For Jim, who has been homeless since he fled an abusive stepfather at 12, the list also includes a wife and car. "And give me a dog, a staffy," he says.
"I want to be normal, aye."
Carpet is another feature on the list. So, too, are children. Each of these young people are certain they will have a house one day. They do not identify with the older people sleeping on the street - they would never eat from a bin, for instance. They talk about a paradox in which they cannot get housing until they stop using drugs but cannot stop using while they remain on the streets.
The inquiry heard drug use among homeless youth has increased in the past 20 years. The type of drugs used has also changed with the wider availability of stimulants such as ice. Reasons for use centre on self-medication and contact with other users on the streets. Two-thirds of problem users developed their habit once they became homeless, and access to detoxification programs remains limited.
A group of boys smokes ice in the alley where John sleeps, the crystals coaxed into vapour by a Zippo flame. "To stay awake," they explain. "Everyone we know's been bashed when they sleep."
A 16-year-old girl sucks butane gas from a canister designed to refill cigarette lighters. She is sleeping on a mattress beside a dumpster in Darlinghurst and says the gas is to stay warm. "It makes your tongue feel like its fallen down your throat, though."
On Saturday morning the Crown Street cafes whir into action - laughter and sundresses, plates heaped with food. A group of homeless young people stand on the corner asking for money - "coal biting", they call it. After an hour they have nothing. People walk past, waving them off. It is the ones who ignore them that cause the frustration.
"Of course I envy them," a boy says as he walks past a cafe. "Sometimes I just want to jam [stab] the c---s, you know, but then I just forget about it."
These young people exist in a sub-community where the key influence is each other. Within days of being on the street, they feel invisible - people look away, ignore them as they walk past. Other young people become the main socialising factor, with the majority of children becoming homeless as the result of family breakdown and disconnection with parents.
"That aspect of my life had become so ingrained into my identity that that's all that I identified with then," a young woman told the inquiry in Brisbane.
Later John picks up some classified ads. He circles two jobs with his finger - for a cabinet maker and an apprentice butcher. He reads the job requirements aloud, slowly and to himself, then folds the paper into his bag.
Later, while window washing, four boys walk past and ask for paper. They want something to chop cannabis on. John hands over the classifieds. When they leave, he jumps into the nook where they were smoking. He pokes through the used foils and finds the paper, folds it and returns it to his bag.
There is a different economy on the street. Most of the young people receive a fortnightly youth allowance of about $300. For those in shelters, half goes on rent and the other half is spent within a day. "When it's like this, you wish you saved some pay," an 18-year-old boy says, washing windows in Paddington. "But you never do - you can't. Everyone wants money and it's the same when they have money. They shout you and you shout them."
Everything is shared among the homeless - hands are open and there is no hope of saving money. Once the pension runs out, money can be made window washing. Others speak of being paid to ferry drugs into prison. Some deal cannabis - they can make about $150 a day - but must first have money. There are drug dealers, a boy says, who will walk through a street and show you what they want and give you drugs once you have stolen it for them.
The simple way of getting money, however, is to beg. When that fails, some homeless youth say they would rob people. The inquiry heard only a minority turned to crime and usually only after the children have been victims of it. "When you buy the food [after robbing someone], you feel sorry," a boy says.
"You know why you did it, but that's not the way you want to do it."
Much of the crime relates to the necessities of homelessness, the report says, noting how inevitable behaviours are criminalised by laws against loitering or begging. These actions are part of a complex series of behaviours learned through homelessness and often inflicted through circumstance. No one chooses to be homeless, the inquiry heard.
In a squat near Central Station a vandalised cavity off a stairwell, John gives over his classified again. The cannabis is chopped once more, but this time John has a smoke. An hour later, 9pm, the group disperses. A resident has said he will call the police if they do not. The paper, with its job prospects, are left behind.

YOUNG AND VULNERABLE

"I left home because my mother and I were constantly arguing. I was having a hard time and became quite depressed. My mother was an ex-drug addict and she had a few issues that I could not cope with, the pressure was too much."
"I left home just after my 15th birthday. My mum was suffering from depression at the time I was kicked out. She had previously kicked out my other siblings, which included a sister younger than myself. I wish I had never been kicked out "
"Originally I moved out with my mum and then I moved in with my dad then I was playing up a bit with my stepmum so I moved in with Mum, playing up there as well been a bad boy basically."
"My father and stepmother believed I wouldn't be gay if they knocked it out of me and quite literally used to slam my head against the wall. It gave me a headache but I'm still gay."
"Well, my housing crisis situation all started when my mum passed away."
"Mum has bipolar and totally has hated me since I was three and my sister was born, and my dad is a violent alcoholic and I don't have friends that will let me stay with them. I now live with Nan, but it's like a prison."
"Left home when 15 years old - kicked out for drugs [marijuana] and adolescent problems. Anger and confusion over what you were meant to be doing."
"The price of private rentals is too high and they don't usually accept you anyway. I feel embarrassed about being homeless because you get dirty looks and many people never seem to understand."
"Being so young with no home, I had no money, no bed, no clothes, wasn't able to bathe or eat and drink."
"The feeling of hopelessness, like you're not worth anything, you feel like giving up, like it's not worth it."
From Australia's Homeless Youth

Helping hand to find her way back to family Adele Horin -

The ordeal of couch-surfing is over for one former runaway, writes Adele Horin. IT WAS not until Renae Parkinson was about 14 that her father's sudden departure from the family six years earlier hit her with crushing intensity. She took her anger out on her mother who had been left to raise two young children on her own. "I was close to him, and I was devastated, and I ended up taking it out on Mum," she said. She ran away from home and, like most young homeless people, began a career of "couch-surfing", moving from one friend's house to another. "I hated it. Every afternoon I'd worry where I'd be going to stay tonight, what if the friend's parents said 'you can't stay here'," she said. "I had to cart my stuff with me." She was living in a youth refuge and wagging school when a worried school principal put her in touch with the Reconnect program run by the Southern Youth and Family Services, based in Wollongong. It is a federally-funded program that aims to prevent youth homelessness or help homeless young people reconcile with their families, and keep them engaged in school or work. A 2003 evaluation of the program - 98 services are operating around Australia - showed it had been highly successful, with 75 per cent of the young people and their families reporting an improvement in their situation. The National Youth Commission has recommended its funding of $23 million be trebled to reach more at-risk children. Parkinson, now 21, said the counselling she and her mother received, and the help to attend school, was invaluable. She was encouraged to talk about what was going on in her emotional life, her depression, and her idea of herself as a "daddy's girl". She felt her mother did not love her. But her mother never gave up and eventually Parkinson, with the counsellor's help, understood how wrong she had been. "They helped me work my way back home," Parkinson said, "and they followed up once I was back there. Me and my mum have a good relationship now. I feel like my mother is my best friend now and I would not have that relationship without the service to help me."

AUSTRALIA’S HOMELESS YOUTH Herald Sun Opinion Piece by David Eldridge - April 8 2008

Over 20 years ago Commissioner Brian Burdekin of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission launched an inquiry into youth homelessness in Australia. For two years Brian Burdekin and his fellow Commissioners, Jan Carter and Fr. Wally Dethlefs, travelled the country conducting hearings where young people, their parents and youth workers told grim stories about the everyday experiences of young homeless people. Burdekin’s report, “Our Homeless Children”, and his continuing campaigning to improve in the lives of homeless young people, had a huge impact on both community and government perceptions of homelessness. However, according to the latest statistics from researchers, twenty years after the Burdekin Inquiry the number of homeless teenagers has doubled to 22,000. How can this have happened? The Australian economy has strengthened, with consistently low levels of unemployment and large budget surpluses. Why have we not been able to curb this escalation in the number of young people living without appropriate family or community support? A National Youth Commission Inquiry into Youth Homelessness (NYC) was established in 2007 in order to find answers to these questions and most importantly to develop solutions. The NYC, an independent community inquiry funded by the Caledonia Foundation, conducted 21 days of hearings in all States and Territories, heard evidence from 319 individuals, received 91 written submissions and held four policy forums. The NYC report, ‘Australia’s Homeless Youth’, was launched today and it presents a ten point Roadmap for Youth Homelessness which outlines an approach that will change the face of youth homelessness in Australia forever. Evidence given to the NYC highlighted the diversity of youth homelessness. For some Australians, young homeless young people are viewed with suspicion and even fear - the aggressive beggar on the street, the young ‘dole bludger’, ‘street kids’ stealing or prostituting themselves for drugs. These are images that often find their way into media reports. They do not accurately reflect the complexity or tragedy of the real-life experiences of homeless young people. Youth homelessness in Australia is not only about street homelessness or ‘rough sleeping’. The Burdekin Report, and a considerable body of subsequent research, has broadened our understanding of the situation of our homeless young people. We know that many have shelter but no safety from abuse, or real security. They live for short periods with friends and acquaintances, at refuges and supported accommodation services, in unsafe boarding houses, squats and sometimes on the street. Transience is the norm and uncertainty about where ‘home’ is creates a shaky foundation for continuing education, employment and connection to community support. My own participation on the NYC was a deeply moving experience. Young people gave emotional and challenging evidence. Their honesty and resilience is uplifting but what has happened to them is an indictment of our corporate neglect of children and young people. I was also encouraged by evidence from youth workers who daily struggle in under-resourced services to meet the needs of these at-risk young people. A number of workers who appeared before the NYC had previously given evidence at the 1989 Burdekin Inquiry and their continuing commitment to homeless young people was an inspiration. Why is youth homelessness worse today than 20 years ago? Well, there are a number of key drivers of youth homelessness and relatively little has been done to deal with these root causes. One is family conflict. All families experience tension and conflict of some form. Marital stress, divorce, the introduction of a step-parent, domestic violence, parental drug use, poverty and long-term unemployment can all contribute to seemingly irreconcilable breakdowns within some families. A direct result for many young people is temporary or permanent homelessness. The experience of the Commonwealth-funded Reconnect Program, over recent years, has proved that early intervention into family conflict and early home leaving can prevent young people leaving home. Yet, only one third of the country has access to a Reconnect Program. We also know that young people who have been in State Care are over-represented amongst the chronically homeless. Unfortunately, many who are abused or neglected at home, or have lived transient lives with their families, continue to experience inadequate support and multiple placements within State Care systems. The number of notifications of risk has risen steeply in recent years and if nothing is done this will inevitably flow on to a growth in the number of young people at-risk of long-term homelessness. Young people receive lower income support payments than adults and if they are working they receive a lower wage. Yet, there are no rental discounts for young people. Their housing costs are the same as everyone else. Young people are already disadvantaged in the housing market and the present housing affordability crisis makes it virtually impossible for them to gain a secure foothold. Public and community housing has not increased to meet demand. Young people experiencing a housing crisis have nowhere to go except crisis accommodation services, tragically, half of those seeking access to these services each night cannot be accommodated. The Rudd Government has identified homelessness as a key policy area for their first term and initiated a policy process involving a Green paper for discussion and a White Paper in August to set out the Government’s plans. This is very positive. The National Youth Commission Report’s Roadmap For Youth Homelessness highlights 10 “must do” strategic areas for attacking youth homelessness in Australia and provides a base of strong evidence for what to do about youth homelessness within the broader Government response to homelessness. The challenge for Government will be to create a truly national plan of action involving the states and the Commonwealth, with targets based on real need and strong accountability. Youth homelessness cannot be solved overnight, but it can be solved if the right policies are implemented and properly resourced over five, ten, and the next twenty years. Let’s make youth homelessness a topic for historical analysis rather than a daily tragedy in the lives of many Australian young people and their families.

Homeless need good Samaritans, and good governments, too Paul Shepanski Sydney Morning Herald - April 11, 2008

Why, despite decades of programs to address it, is the homelessness of youth chronic in Australia?
Last night the ABC screened The Oasis: Australia's Homeless Youth, a gripping documentary by Sascha Ettinger-Epstein and Ian Darling. The film, shot over two years, portrays the devastated lives of young people who live on our city streets.

At the centre of the cyclone of calamity and confusion stands the Salvation Army's Captain Paul Moulds. Models of almost Christ-like compassion and self-sacrifice, Moulds and his wife, Robbin, offer help to some of the weakest members of our community.
Cutting through the tortured complexity of these shattered young lives to identify the root cause, Captain Moulds states the obvious truth: "It is not about material things; it is mainly about the quality of relationships in families."
We are right to laud such people as urban heroes. But the sheer numbers of those deemed homeless in Australia each night - estimated at more than 46,000 under the age of 25 - demand a larger response. This week the National Youth Commission outlined 10 "must do" strategic areas for action, to be co-ordinated and funded largely by the Commonwealth and State Governments. And the Prime Minister has made a firm commitment to develop a long-term plan to reduce homelessness for all ages.
This twin focus of reliance on care from devoted individuals and community groups, with a mix of targeted government policies and programs, has characterised the response to social problems of Western welfare states, including our own, for the past century.
But history shows that this approach fails to deliver for homeless youth. The evidence for such failure is clear: for the last 20 years, despite extraordinary national wealth and expanding government service budgets for welfare initiatives, Australia's toll of social ills has continued to escalate. Tellingly, over these past two decades under a cycle of both Labor and coalition governments, youth homelessness has doubled while growth in our nation's material prosperity has burgeoned.

We all know, deep down, that the fundamental issue here is the quality of relationships: whether we seek to protect the wellbeing of our young, support the resilience of indigenous communities, protect women from domestic violence, or simply help working families to stay together as families.
Individual responsibility in building and maintaining strong relationships cannot be avoided or denied. At the same time, we must recognise that government policies have far-reaching social effects through their impact on relationships, whether or not that is their intention.
Issues that are often considered in predominantly economic terms - including urban planning and transport, housing, workplace relations, infrastructure, telecommunications, and water management - affect the stability of families, local communities and our broader society.
To address youth homelessness and other social problems effectively, the connections and dependencies between all government policies and relational outcomes must be understood and addressed proactively.

For example, as governments consider new workplace legislation or changes to retail trading hours, consideration needs to be given to the full social impact of changes. Working hours directly influence the amount and quality of time shared by parents, and the time they can spend with their children. Research has demonstrated a strong link between long and unsocial working hours and what happens in families, including the health of parents and their children and, ultimately, family breakdown. Retail trading hours establish a pattern of community and working life that has a powerful influence on family time.

Similarly, decisions about water management will have far-reaching effects on rural communities and the families who live in them. In addition, urban planning and transport policy directly influence commuting times, and the ease with which we can visit distant relatives and friends. The importance of housing affordability in supporting family relationships is well understood. Government decisions in these areas, and many others, affect the core relationships in all our lives.
Growth in youth homelessness and other acute social ills are the most obvious manifestation of a malady that runs deeper through Australian society.
A properly integrated approach to public policy is urgently needed. It will require a significant transformation from the status quo, but the reward will be worthwhile. It will overtake the limitations of federal and state boundaries and intra-government departmental silos to regard the bigger picture. And environmental as well as social implications of public policies will be dealt with explicitly, rather than by accident or afterthought.
The coming Australia 2020 summit provides a great starting point for a national discussion. However, the practical necessity of dividing delegates into 10 topic areas typifies a traditional, segmented way of thinking about policy.
The summit sets out to identify a range of new ideas from the community that can be shaped into public policy. But a set of insightful solutions in disparate policy areas will not achieve the stated goal: "to develop an agreed national direction that looks at the next 10 years and beyond". This will only be attained if a diverse range of plans is drawn together into a coherent whole.

Paul Shepanski is the executive director of Relationships Forum Australia.

Break the cycle: downhill slide for homeless is rapid
Sydney Morning Herald Opinion Sascha Ettinger Epstein - April 10 2008

The chaotic and turbulent world of the streets is no place for young teenagers - yet every year kids who can no longer live at home and fall through safety nets end up adrift in this urban wilderness. Within the first week of my immersion at Oasis, a Salvation Army refuge in inner city Sydney, with co-director Ian Darling I witnessed the bashing of a 15-year old girl and realised no one is exempt from the aggression and volatility of street culture. Another young girl nearly lost her leg when she was randomly stabbed by a friend suffering an ice-induced psychosis, who then tried to apologise for his unprovoked attack. Turned away from underresourced services, kids as young as 12 routinely spend nights trawling through parks, squats and abandoned buildings, mingling in food-van queues exposed to the elements and myriad dangers. Others pool their welfare money to pay extortionate rents and cram top to toe into tiny roach-infested rooms in boarding houses, only to be evicted back into the night for noise complaints. The pursuit of drugs to block out reality becomes a way of life. It is difficult for most to understand how kids this young, living through what is traditionally cherished as the most blissful stage of life, already find life so bleak that their only interest is getting "off their face". What people don't know is the sheer horror of what many of them have already experienced, even as pre-pubescents. One 19-year-old had already learnt by the age of five to call an ambulance to revive her father from a heroin overdose and recalled how her mother had committed suicide in front of her at eight. Such past traumas and the ensuing deeply internalised sense of worthlessness create a kind of fatalistic paralysis which stops many of these kids from even hoping to improve their lives. They are resigned to failure and turn to the short-term escapism of drugs and booze to avoid the problems of immediate reality and dull the hurt. They don't have the foresight to realise that when the high wears off they will feel even worse and the problems will still be there to deal with. Many do themselves irreparable physical and psychological damage when they spiral into chronic drug addiction and make themselves vulnerable to street predators and terrible situations in order to get drugs. They rub off on each other badly too, especially at such an impressionable age. Girls who have never even smoked a cigarette can descend into heavy injecting of drugs within a few months of bad influence. The financial burden of an expensive drug habit can eventually necessitate prostitution. The downhill slide can be rapid, so it is imperative to act quickly and whisk these kids to safety or intervene in their lives as early as possible. While the film Oasis puts a face to the statistics, the National Youth Commission inquiry, funded by the Caledonia Foundation and released this week, provides a road map for what can be done. Probably the most important issue to tackle is the intergenerational cycle of poverty and dysfunction which perpetuates and intensifies with every baby born. With the prevalence of drugs, lowered inhibition and the natural fertility of young girls, pregnancy is rife among the children of the street. And the desire of young mothers-to-be to fill their own gaping emotional void dwarfs any fear of the hardships of raising a child. The birth of their own offspring who represent the hope of new life and innocence is often ultimately marred by the fact that the child will face a life of disadvantage in a perpetuation of the cycle its parents are already part of. Some babies are already disadvantaged at birth, affected by the poor diet or drugs and alcohol their mother's body passed on to them. The most valuable lesson we can learn from scrutinising the fraught lives of the kids of the streets at Oasis is not to pre-judge people. Meeting the most dishevelled, downtrodden young person, or the toughest looking thug, you can never be sure what kind of person they are below the surface or what kind of life they have lived. These kids are largely the product of shocking misfortune and their bad circumstances are only exacerbated by the dangerous lifestyles they lead. Many people in society write them off as scum and welfare parasites but often they are far more victims than perpetrators. The public really fails to understand the imminent danger of doing nothing to help them. To go for the jugular, your cars, your property, your own children will not be safe if kids who have been abused and abandoned are left to go feral on the streets with no one to care for them.

A seat to call one's own Editorial, The Big Issue - April 7 2008

The good news is that people are talking about homelessness. The bad news is that people still need to talk about it.
At least it seems to be an issue that is on the agenda of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. It was only after last year’s federal election that it became known that the-then Opposition Leader had visited a homeless shelter during the campaign. Had he done this with cameras and reporters in tow it might well have been dismissed as a cynical political stunt. Instead, his concern appeared genuine, and he subsequently suggested to his parliamentary colleagues that they, too, should get first-hand experience of services to the homeless.

As PM, Mr Rudd has gone some way to turning words into actions. There’s a commitment by his government to spend $150 million on new housing and $2.8 million for social, sporting and community programs. In addition, in January he announced plans to develop what he called “a comprehensive, long-term plan to reduce homelessness”.

There are proposals for a green paper, a formal process of consultation next month, then a white paper in September charting a way forward. Please don’t ask me the significance of the colour-coding, though I’m reassured by the fact that Tony Nicholson, executive director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence and a man with vast experience in the social welfare sector, is leading the steering committee. Still, there’s always concern that these things can generate more papers than projects.

It is estimated that on any night, around 100,000 people in Australia are homeless – a category that includes people staying with friends or relatives (but without a permanent home of their own), people in places such as boarding houses, people sleeping rough, and people in crisis or transitional accommodation. The problem is getting worse rather than better.

Early figures from the 2006 national census suggest an increase in the number sleeping rough. Half of all people (including children) wanting emergency accommodation will be turned away. The number of families seeking assistance from the St Vincent de Paul Society rose by 30% between 2002 and 2007. Which was, we were told in last year’s election campaign, a period of great prosperity in Australia. And it probably was – for some. Luxury cars sold well. Penthouses in new apartment buildings were keenly sought after. They still are. Meanwhile, the largest single group in the homeless population, making up just over one-third of the total, represents those aged between 12 and 24.

This month, a new report on homeless youth will be released (see p22). It comes almost 20 years after an influential report on the same topic. Those involved could be forgiven for wondering if much has changed at all: only the faces and figures are different. But at least the PM appears keen to do something about it. As does his wife, Therese Rein.

During their recent visit to New York, Rein visited the HQ of Common Ground, which converts buildings into affordable housing. She is patron of an Australian offshoot of the organisation. Also in New York, the PM announced a possible Australian bid for a seat on the UN’s Security Council in 2013–14. The cost of such a bid, which appears to be the diplomatic equivalent of anything involving the Olympics, reportedly could be $35 million. Perhaps I don’t get out enough, but I’ve never encountered anyone terribly fussed about Australia’s influence (or lack thereof) in the Security Council. And there are any number of services and groups dealing with homelessness that would put $35 million to much better use. Priorities, Prime Minister, it’s all about priorities…

At The Big Issue, we work with people who know a lot about homelessness. But it’s wrong to suggest that all our vendors are homeless. Many will have experienced it, but selling the magazine is often part of a long-term process to improve their circumstances.
Those of us who put the magazine together have a relatively simple brief: make it as lively, interesting, relevant and appealing as possible. The more copies each vendor sells, the happier we all are. Actor Kerry Armstrong (our cover story this edition) and the issue of homelessness may seem like an odd mixture. But, really, they’re a perfect marriage – and not only because Armstrong has a strong social conscience.
This is the only magazine that can offer an interview with somebody like her in a publication that directly helps the person selling it. That’s the good news. And, this time, there’s no bad news

Helping charity harness power of doco Jane Schulze, The Australian - April 10 2008

IAN Darling believes documentaries have the power to influence social change.
The producer and co-director of the feature length documentary The Oasis (which screens tonight on ABC1) also chairs a new philanthropic initiative to develop more documentaries focusing on social issues. The broadcast of The Oasis, which follows Salvation Army captain Paul Moulds as he tries to help homeless youth at the Oasis Centre in inner Sydney, follows this week's release of the National Youth Commission's report Australia's Homeless Youth.
The issue has been embraced by the national broadcaster: ABC1 will air a 40-minute panel discussion called The Forum with Tony Jones (featuring some of the people in the documentary) immediately after The Oasis; that program will also be webcast on abc.net.au and ABC774 will simulcast the program into Melbourne.
Mr Darling hoped similar documentaries would emerge from the Documentary Australia Foundation, which was launched last November to encourage charitable foundations to fund social issue-based documentaries.
Mr Darling said the group had been swamped with ideas and already had more than 100 documentary concepts that had passed its approval process. Now DAF is educating charitable foundations about how documentaries can inspire social change.
"We have learned from the US that foundations are happy to support documentaries if the films are about the same sort of issues (that) they support," he said.
One notable example was former eBay president Jeff Skoll's Skoll Foundation as a major backer of Al Gore's climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which put the issue of climate change on the global political agenda. Mr Darling said the Skoll Foundation's return on social capital was well ahead of its many other funding options. "It's this sort of thing we are trying to encourage here so we create a new sustainable funding stream for these documentaries," he said.
Mr Darling said philanthropically funded documentaries were virtually non-existent in Australia. "Traditionally, grant makers have not wanted to support media," he said.
"But the sorts of films that happen in the US can be five minutes long, for use in schools, or at the other end of the scale they can be films which are made for cinema release."
The makers of The Oasis hope to awaken Australians to the immense problem of youth homelessness in this country.
The 75-minute documentary, co-directed by Sasha Ettinger Epstein, was jointly funded by the ABC and Mr Darling's company Shark Island Productions. Mr Darling also chairs the Caledonia Foundation, which will deliver a free copy of the DVD and a study guide on the subject to every secondary school in Australia.
The Caledonia Foundation, which seeks to support disadvantaged young Australians, also funded the National Youth Commission report. "While it (The Oasis) was putting a face to youth homelessness, we realised that to really get the community and government to embrace the issue we needed a factual account of what was happening out there," Mr Darling said.
The report was prepared by a group of independent experts who also made numerous recommendations on how the problems should be fixed. The Rudd Government is due to release its initial response to the report at the end of April and a larger response in August.
"But the Government can't do it alone and the community needs to get behind the issue," Mr Darling said. "Coming back to An Inconvenient Truth, it was people power that made the difference to the environmental debate, and I'm hoping the same thing happens with youth homelessness."
Mr Darling said the problem had now become a "national disgrace", with the number of kids on the street doubling in the past 20 years to an estimated 40,000. "And that has happened at a time of record economic prosperity ... so we are hoping the power of the medium will play a large role in this," he said.
"We hope the community has the courage to watch this and to keep the issue on the agenda."
The 75-minute documentary was co-directed by Sasha Ettinger Epstein.
April 10, 2008

Homeless spend night on the town Annalise Walliker Herald Sun - April 8 2008

DURING the day you walk over and through these young people's homes - they sleep on the footpath, under concrete staircases, in parks and deserted power stations.

The Herald Sun spent an evening on the streets with the Salvation Army to meet Melbourne's homeless youths. This is how the night unfolded.

7.30pm -- Coffees and a barbecue are served to more than 20 homeless young people and a handful of adults at the Salvation Army's Project 614 bus in the CBD.
The state-of-the-art mobile drop-in centre offers food, computer access and a safe place to hang out in the CBD four nights a week.
Up to 80 homeless youths visit the bus every night.
"Basically, we want to get to them before the drug dealers, pimps and boredom do," commanding officer Brendan Nottle said.
8.15pm -- A group of homeless teens discuss how they have resorted to begging, stealing and robbing people at knifepoint along the Yarra River to get enough money to afford food and housing.
Some are too young to receive the dole, and none have been successful at recent job applications.
Austin ran away from his Dandenong home two years ago when family fighting became too much.
Since then the aspiring actor has been sleeping on the street, spending occasional nights at friends' places.
"When I first started having to rob people I felt really guilty, but now it's just something I have to do to survive," Austin said.
"People don't even look at us when we ask for money. They think they're better than us.
"We're people too. We need money to eat and live, we just can't get it as easy as they can."
His mate Jimbo is on bail for armed robbery and "Scarface" talks about the hold-ups being a form of amusement on quiet nights.
"It's like, 'What are we doing tonight boys? Let's make some money'," Scarface said.
"Either that or we buy Panadol, grind it up and sell it as fake drugs."

8.45pm -- A young woman fights with her boyfriend on the street, upset after talking about her past drug use and recent miscarriage.
9.20pm -- Dave, in his mid-20s, proudly shows us "his bench" on the banks of the Yarra where he slept every night for a month and a half until recently finding emergency accommodation.
Across the river the Crown casino buildings fire up.
"On really cold nights I could feel those flames from here," Dave said.
"This place feels really safe to me. I was never mugged or moved on, but I'd wake up and stick my head up every half hour just to make sure."

10.15pm -- Outreach van offers coffees to two men who are intoxicated, presumably from heroin.
Will, 18, and Ozzie 20, are sleeping in a squat metres from a Melbourne sports ground.
"We were kicked out of the boarding house we were living in by the landlady this afternoon," Will said.
"But it was s--- anyway. We were paying $130 a week to sleep in a six-bedroom dorm, no food or bills included.
"We went to the St Kilda Sacred Heart City Mission but they had no room for us so we came here to sleep."

10.45pm -- The bus continues to squats near the Queen Victoria market, the State Library and known homeless hangouts in the CBD.

National report on homelessness is clarion call to action Toby Hall The Canberra Times - April 9 2008

The National Youth Commission's report, Australia's Homeless Youth, issued yesterday represents a watershed moment in our ongoing battle against this blight on our society.
Not since the Burdekin report in 1989 has the scale of the problem been so accurately exposed. When the number of homeless teenagers doubles in 20 years, despite us achieving record levels of prosperity, then something is seriously wrong.

But while the problem is on the increase, it's not insurmountable, and the recommendations in the report, along with costings, provide us with a good start for bringing homeless numbers down. As one of the lead agencies in dealing with homelessness, Mission Australia firmly believes that the eradication of homelessness in Australia is an achievable goal. ,br>
Given that young Australians make up almost half the total number of the country's homeless (46,000 under the age of 25 out of a homeless population of 100,000) and considering their extreme vulnerability, we must find the willpower and resources to start helping them first. ,br> For starters, the report's recommendations for a threefold increase in the Federal Government's youth homelessness program, Reconnect, as well as expanding another of its homelessness prevention initiatives, HOME Advice, are absolutely on the money. We also suggest there are a range of other support services that could be introduced to complement both programs.
For example, Reconnect works with families to reduce conflict and reconcile parents and their kids in order to prevent youth homelessness. Sometimes, giving a teenager "time out" from home, just for a week or two, allows for breathing space where problems can be more effectively solved.

To this end, I believe the Nightstop program that's been operating successfully in Britain is worth considering.

Under Nightstop, homeless young people stay temporarily at the house of a carefully screened volunteer. This would allow Reconnect's highly skilled staff to do their job and work on the issues at the heart of the parentyoung person conflict even more successfully.
It's a valuable alternative to young people entering the emergency accommodation system. We want to avoid young people getting caught up in the cycle of homelessness as much as possible.
It also helps harness local community resources. Many community members want to support homeless young people but don't know how. This approach keeps young people in their community, and in a safe environment, while giving them and their family the time out they need.
We also need to do better at integrating the support services available for young homeless people or those at risk of homelessness.

One option for some homeless young people is creating youth "foyers" these offer a range of support services depending on the person's situation and need. Foyers are quite common in Britain and France and play a leading role, not only in providing bedsit accommodation and other services, but also links to employment, education and training, which are particularly important factors in getting someone out of homelessness.
It's also essential that the services we offer provide young homeless people with stepping stones back into the community.
At the moment, a homeless young person might receive help for three months at a crisis service and then get placed in more long-term accommodation, which supposedly ends the problem.

But how can that be?

Common sense and experience tells us that three months in a crisis service isn't going to be enough to t