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Cold start to National Homeless Persons' Week

At the start of National Homeless Persons' Week, Mission Australia has thrown its support behind the Rudd Government’s ‘White Paper’ – the first in-depth and comprehensive review of homelessness in Australia in 25 years.

The process is currently at the ‘Green Paper’ stage, with individuals and agencies now invited to make comment on the findings, including Mission Australia. 

State Director Ross Kyrwood said that Mission Australia fully supports the strategy, which tackles the issue of homelessness up until 2020. 

“We believe it's necessary to set ambitious and achievable goals and targets for combating homelessness - for a start, let’s significantly reduce the numbers of rough sleepers and those in temporary, insecure or substandard accommodation,” Mr Kyrwood said. 

“We need to dramatically decrease the flow of people coming into homelessness and improve service quality for those who are, or at risk of being without accommodation,” he said. 

Mr Kyrwood said that in its submission to the Green Paper, Mission Australia stressed the need for

Australia to develop a new approach to homelessness. 

“What we need are individualised and flexible services which focus on each client as an individual, not 'one-size-fits-all',” he said. 

“We need to provide a combination of holistic services and accommodation, with a focus on a person's health, education, welfare and employment. Getting a homeless person back on their feet is more than just about finding them a roof over their head. 

“We would also encourage more integrated services – this stops the client having to 'run around' between different agencies and services where they might have to be assessed again and again and eventually slip through the cracks. 

“Navigating various unintegrated agencies can be very intimidating if you're a vulnerable homeless person,” Mr Kyrwood said. 

Other areas of focus in the submission put forward by Mission

Australia included: 

·        A national and integrated plan between all levels of government and involve the NGO service providers. The 'Linking Support and Housing to End Homelessness' plan provides, among other things, a national framework for ending homelessness while allowing local innovation. 

·        Use the new National Affordable Housing Agreement - set to be negotiated at COAG and launched on 1 January 2009 - as the main vehicle for linking support and accommodation and rolling out homelessness prevention strategies. 

·        Better data collection - if we improve our data capture on people using homeless services, we will be better equipped to address the problem. 

The Facts on Homelessness: 

•          On any night, there are about 100,000 homeless people across Australia. Forty-six percent of homeless people are aged below 25 years of age. 
•          Each year, Mission Australia helps around 5,000 homeless people with accommodation and housing support, and prevents another 40,000 people from becoming homeless through its services.
•          Around 3,000 homeless people get turned away by Mission Australia each year, because they can’t afford to help them.

John Cooke provides public relations services for Mission Australia in Western Australia.