ACWA attended the Homelessness Week 2024 launch at Wesley Mission in Central Sydney on August 5, with prominent speakers discussing the topic of Ending Homelessness for Children and Families.

Hosted by Homelessness NSW and Homelessness Australia, newly appointed Minister for Housing and Minster for Homelessness, Clare O’Neil, commenced proceedings by acknowledging the enormous factors facing her new portfolio, and her steadfast commitment and enthusiasm for working with the sector.

Kate Colvin, CEO of Homelessness Australia, pointed to their research released this week that outlines 88,000 children and families reached out to SHS in the 2022/20-23 period, and that of that number a third are still classified as homeless, with even more at risk of. 20,000 children who reached out for assistance were turned away. Many of these children and young people would have been in contact with child protection or lived in out-of-home care.

National Children’s Commissioner, Anne Hollonds, delivered a keynote address, imploring that social services sectors must to work as a federation in addressing the human rights of children. She highlighted that children’s policy sits across many portfolios and not having a dedicated Minister for Children, results in a lack of accountability; sadly, child safety and wellbeing is not a national priority, and children are often overlooked. This has led to Australia being ranked a shameful 32 out of 38 OECD countries for children’s wellbeing.

Many echoed Anne Hollond’s sentiments that the health, education and social services sectors are highly fragmented and siloed, which makes real reform and progress challenging. She described the current system as an ‘epidemic of unmet needs’ for children. To counteract this, those working in systems reform need to listen to children’s voices and look to have a proper understanding of children’s development.

This lack of holistic approach leads to vulnerable children not having adequate scaffolding in place when their families/caregivers are facing major challenges. She highlighted that 97% of youth in custody are held in remand when on bail as they don’t have a safe space to be sent to.

John Leha, CEO of AbSec, talked about the importance of focusing on the intersection of child protection, housing and DFSV. Homelessness and systemic racism are two key drivers explaining the overrepresentation of First Nations children in out-of-home care. He pointed to bolstering ACCO’s and focusing on early investment and prevention strategies to help improve Closing the Gap targets.

Dom Rowe, CEO of Homelessness NSW, spoke of the need of bold and courageous interventions, highlighting that child protection costs would reduce drastically if housing was addressed properly.

Francis Crimmins, CEO of YWCA Canberra, shared the enormous positive outcomes of their clients involved in their Safer Places program and called for more funding of these facilities, set up like homes for women and children fleeing violence. She reported what many know: that motels are not an appropriate place for children or women to recover from trauma.

The biggest takeaways from the session included:

• The human rights of children should be at the forefront of decision making and progress should be made at a legislative level to ensure this happens.
• We must be willing to lean into self-reflection and have difficult yet important conversations to overcome the barriers facing all social services sectors who approach work in a siloed manner.
• We need to listen to the true needs of children and young people.
• We must demand solutions as a whole cross-sector collaborative and blend our expertise to truly support children and young people.

The audience was reminded by many speakers that access to stable and safe housing is the foundation for all wellbeing and it has a profound and life changing impact on all, including children and young people.

As summed up by the speakers, let’s aim make some noise this Homelessness Week.