Accommodation services
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1 223 8.55 Rileys would like to have established a third stage — a minimally-supported stage — and to have ultimately assisted participants into independent living under the Head Leasing Transfer Scheme of the New South Wales Department of Housing." With the closure of Rileys, there are now very few residential treatment programs in inner Sydney — an area of very high need — for homeless young substance abusers. The costs of this neglect are likely to be high (see Chapter 7, The Costs of Youth Homelessness). PUBLIC SECTOR ACCOMMODATION MODELS 18.56 The National Youth Coalition for Housing and a number of other witnesses to the Inquiry recommended far greater involvement by State housing authorities in providing long-term accommodation for young people: ...for many young people the private rental market is totally inaccessible and home ownership is even more inaccessible. Yet in Australia we continue to have government policies and priorities that put the bulk of the government dollar that goes into housing into the pockets of middle to high income earners in the provision of subsidies for home ownership. If we are going to deal with the long-term housing needs of young homeless people we have to deal with their needs for independent, secure, longterm affordable housing. The place for that, the National Youth Coalition for Housing believes, is within the public housing sector, as a sector that can be a longterm choice for those young people where they can manage and live in a way that is independent." The Victorian Youth Accommodation Coalition agreed: ...access to an affordable public housing system with an adequate stock is the best long-term solution to the already pressing need of low-income people requiring independent housing." Anglicare in Tasmania also made this point: Improved access to public housing and improved selection criteria in the housing sector; specialist housing for young people; purpose-built housing for long-term homeless people who tend to be recidivists within the system and keep coming back through the shelter system, would also be an advantage." One scheme which combines community initiative and management and Housing Department resources is the Community Tenancy Scheme operating in New South Wales. Community Tenancy Scheme (New South Wales) 18.57 The Community Tenancy Scheme (CTS) is funded under the Mortgage and Rent Relief Scheme of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement and is administered by the New South Wales Department of Housing. The Scheme has the following objectives:
18.58 In initiating the CTS in 1982, the New South Wales Government argued that it was a logical development for the community sector to provide medium and long-term housing for low income earners as well as crisis and supported accommodation. The CTS's target groups are people awaiting public
housing and those traditionally excluded from, or having poor access to, public housing (for example, single people and special needs groups such as chronically homeless people)." One of the key objectives in shifting the focus of a rental subsidy scheme (the traditional Mortgage and Rent Relief Scheme) away from cash assistance was 'to pay more attention to the supply side of the housing problem faced by low income households'." CTS tenants pay rent based on 20% of household income. This was set to give parity with the rent paid by low income households in public housing. 18.59 The advantage of community-based management of this public sector scheme, it was submitted to the Inquiry, is that individual programs operate from detailed local knowledge of housing needs and availability by drawing on local resources and expertise. In the 1986-87 financial year, 1,353 young people aged between 16 and 24 years were assisted by CTS. They represented 19% of all households assisted under the scheme." INFORMATION, OUTREACH AND REFERRAL 18.60 If any scheme for the provision of accommodation to homeless children and young people most in need is to be successful, appropriate methods must be found for informing them about accommodation options available and for providing them with access to such services. For this reason, outreach and referral services have been developed. It is also crucial that referral services are linked into a service network.6` Housing and Young People's Outreach Service (Tasmania) 18.61 The Housing and Young People's Outreach Service (HYPO) began in Hobart in 1986 after pressure from neighbours 62 and a Ministerial directive forced the closure of the Gateway Youth Shelter. Gateway had been funded through SAAP and provided crisis and emergency accommodation. With the assistance of the Tasmanian Department of Community Welfare, the HYPO group retained SAAP funding and its five staff positions and re-oriented its services to homeless children and young people. The workers at Gateway decided that, utilising the experience they had gained while working in the shelter, they could develop a support and outreach program that would more adequately meet the medium to long-term housing needs of young people who had previously used shelters. 18.62 HYPO aims to provide the following services to homeless children and young people in Hobart:
18.63 HYPO specificially tries to help young people obtain appropriate, affordable accommodation and then to offer them continuing support to retain that accommodation and to survive financially in the community. If necessary, HYPO provides emotional support and friendship when the young person's personal networks are limited." In this respect, HYPO is also a detached housing support service. Evidence presented to the Inquiry by a worker with HYPO explains the philosophy of its service provision: We believe that people in need should surrender as little of their independence as possible to receive the service. That was one of the reasons that we found shelter-based accommodation so frustrating a way to deal with young people because of the need to have a policing role within the shelter just to maintain some semblance of order at times...Also we believe that in being assisted, young people's skills need to be enhanced by that process...and that the process of being helped should be as much a learning and self-enhancement process as receiving basic needs." 225 18.64 HYPO has the following characteristics:
18.65 HYPO's housing and outreach work is the main feature of the service. It includes assistance in house or flat hunting;
HYPO also operates a furniture pool. In addition to accommodation-related services, HYPO provides advocacy assistance in obtaining income support benefits, emergency aid (including food orders and clothing) and in liaising with government departments. The program also provides assistance with family reconciliation and communication. Some legal information, referral, assistance with lawyer's appointments and support in court is available, as are health information and referrals. Information is also available about sport and recreation and about education. In summary, HYPO attempts to address a wide range of each young person's support, information and referral needs. COMMUNITY-BASED MANAGEMENT 18.66 The way in which the Youth Supported Accommodation and Local Government and Community Housing Programs operate means that most youth accommodation services are delivered by non-government organisations. Partly due to the strictures imposed by the YSAP guidelines, the most effective services are often those which do not receive YSAP funding. Many of these services are `community-based' in the sense that they are initiated and managed by representatives of a local community or a locality. This means that:
18.67 The underlying premise of using community-managed organisations to deliver community services is that the local community is sufficiently competent, has the requisite resources and can mobilise sufficient commitment. This premise is sometimes disputed — from two different points of view. On one hand it is argued that in fact the community cannot be expected to look after its own. Therefore, there is a need for government services to fill the gap. On the other hand, governments which seek to rely on community-based services are criticised for exploiting community good-will and volunteer labour. The Inquiry views community-based projects in a somewhat different light. They should be seen neither as 'spray-on solutions', 'cheap alternatives' or 'temporary measures'" nor as accepting the sole responsibility for the welfare of the community. Rather, in partnership with government, the local community can provide an individualised, locally-relevant service to those in need. Unfortunately, the Inquiry found little interest in such a partnership on the part of governments. Community-based projects generally contend with inflexible guidelines for funding and a tight bureaucratic rein on programs and outcomes. In this climate, community organisations tend to adopt an emergency or band-aid approach to needs perceived and defined by governments rather than as they themselves perceive them (and know them, from close experience, to be). The way in which governments initiate and fund community-based projects requires a new balance: To impose rigid categories on local communities results in artificial criteria, exclusion, gaps, overlaps, and lack of flexibility... At the same time...it is difficult for local people to respond to the complexities of youth homelessness without externally suggested program and guidelines. It is always a matter of balancing the creative energies, talents and understanding of particular communities with the knowledge, standards and accountability that the wider community has and demands. However, the overriding principle of a community development program is that what can be decided and achieved at the local level is best left with local people.' 18.68 If governments were to devolve more authority and responsibility to individual YSAP projects, these projects could undertake a desirable change of direction: YSAP projects need resources to vary service models to meet particular needs. They need more authority to make project policy decisions that would enable a move away from remedial and emergency responses to prevention and development and more training and support to work with rather than for youth. Many YSAP projects would welcome such an expanded role, but others would not. An increase of funds to YSAP projects in and of itself would not necessarily ensure those necessary changes." 18.69 Community-based services hold substantial potential because they offer individuals the opportunity to become involved in their own community. It was put to the Inquiry that community projects can provide, more efficiently and effectively than centrally designed and implemented programs, individually modelled services in a context of community support, incorporating a range of services. In addition, community-based services promote community responsibility for children in need — with a range of individuals, families and groups taking some responsibility for their care and support:1° 18.70 In the Inquiry's view, there are individuals in most communities who would welcome the opportunity to play a role in community development. Indeed there is considerable evidence to support the view taken by Anthony Kelly and Sandra Sewell, in a report commissioned by the Inquiry,'' that the participation and commitment of local people is an essential ingredient in any successful project for homeless youth. Community enthusiasm, however, often has to contend with bureaucratic complexity and inflexibility — with the result that it cannot be sustained. In particular: The complexities of current Commonwealth-State relations and provisions reflect the discrepancies between what is and what could be offered to young [homeless] people at the local level." 18.71 It was put to the Inquiry that Commonwealth-State funding arrangements require substantial improvement to encourage and sustain community involvement: Responsibility for funding is the central issue, and the more this is bounced back and forth between Commonwealth and State, the Jess likely it is that either level of government will be able to give the community a clear mandate to undertake a community development project. The wastage of community energy and goodwill is the high cost of this kind of confusion." 18.72 A community project, giving young people, the local community and government the opportunity to work together, would have the following strengths: • accessible -- young people can participate without severing all familiar relationships with [extended] family, schools, neighbours and friends;
In addition, it was submitted to the Inquiry that a community-based project can incorporate 'a pool of trained volunteers who are prepared to provide intensive support and accommodation when required' which increases the available options for each child." 18.73 Kelly and Sewell commented that: These are the particular contributions that a community development program stimulates. All community projects, however, should be expressions of qualities common to the finest of welfare services, namely: open and inclusive, wide ranging and comprehensive, expert, unbiased, nonpartisan and nonsectarian. It is most acceptable that these qualities be demanded of the community by Government in funding and evaluation negotiations, just as real authority and adequate resources be a matter for the community to discuss and demand without fear of Government reprisal." It must be recognised, of course, that community-based youth service projects also have limitations." But these limitations are far fewer that those currently displayed by most youth refuges where the community is not involved. 18.74 To test our conclusions, and in order to obtain data which may be helpful to governments, we located a major community-based program serving homeless children (Sasha Bruce Youthwork Inc. in Washington DC) which has evolved over 15 years from a streetwork counselling agency to a highly integrated and co-ordinated program incorporating many of the same features as Logan City, BABI and HYPO. While it must be emphasised that this program is in the United States, where social welfare infrastructures and demographic features differ, it serves homeless children who the Inquiry determined face problems extremely similar to those of our homeless children." The key features of the Sasha Bruce program are that it:
CONCLUSION 18.75 Part of our objective in this chapter has been to identify, for communities in Australia, as well as for governments, the essential ingredients of a handful of programs which effectively address the disparate and often desperate needs of our homeless children and young people. While our central focus has been dictated by the needs and rights of these young people, the evidence available indicates that in practice, community-based programs are economically, as well as socially, the most effective. Because the Australian programs are all relatively recent in origin, it is difficult to prove this in statistical terms. However, the demonstrated success rate of BABI in Queensland in placing children in supportive accommodation, encouraging them to remain with their families where possible, and preventing their involvement in the juvenile justice and welfare systems has been of enormous benefit in assisting the children involved — and has also saved the Queensland Government substantial sums of money.° The evidence available from the Sasha Bruce Youthwork programs, which have operated over a longer period and dealt with children and families with very similar problems, supports this conclusion. 18.76 Accommodation in short-term refuges — the primary weapon in the YSAP armoury81 — is clearly a superficial and often ineffective response to protecting our homeless children. The focus of government efforts must be shifted — quickly. N 229 otes
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