Those who work with young people in Queensland’s non-government and government organisations joined with colleagues from around Australia and packed into Rydges Ballroom to soak in Platform 1225, 2026. This was a wonderful opportunity to hear from brilliant presenters and experts in their fields – academics, practitioners, young people and campaign coordinators.
The consistency of key messages across presenters was striking. The most consistent of which was: WE NEED TO SUPPORT A SHIFT TO PREVENTION!
Queensland leading the way – Queensland received a shout out from our southern colleagues in leading the way with our Youth Housing and Homelessness Strategy. States and Territories around Australia are now working with their governments to follow our footsteps and develop their own youth housing and homelessness strategies.
Consistent key messages across presentations:
- Listen, have empathy, build rapport and recognise any behavioural change takes time and significant support and guidance.
- Ask questions, be curious.
- Young people have significant difficulty navigating systems. Not because they have difficulties but because systems are not set up for young people.
- The importance of family and connections.
- Prevention and intervention as early as possible is key in most social issues, especially DFV and youth homelessness
Canada’s Professor Stephen Gaetz told us that 50% of homeless adults first experienced homelessness before the age of 25. Imagine the trauma and ongoing costs across health and welfare we could avoid if we intervened early by providing wrap around supports to exit homelessness to ensure young people have a short-lived experience of homelessness.
It makes no sense to try to resolve homelessness once it’s chronic – of course we still respond to this cohort but for impactful intervention, energy needs to be invested earlier when inputs can be more impactful.
He talked to the importance of caring about youth homelessness and his concern that many governments don’t prioritise young people which intensifies their homelessness issues. He spoke to the importance of schools in solving the youth homelessness puzzle. Reconnect, Upstream and on a state level we spoke later in the panels of the Youth Support Coordinator program, and the new early intervention for families in primary schools as a collaboration between education 2 local Ipswich schools in Queensland schools and Ipswich Community and Youth Service (ICYS). Early intervention work focused on homelessness is so vital in collaboration with schools. We know we have tried and tested models that work!
Professor Gaetz also spoke to Housing First for Young People leading to improved mental health, improved resilience, improved life and financial skills and improved relationships. He said emergency responses are between 3 to 10 times more expensive than early intervention and prevention responses.
Ruby spoke to feeling alone in Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) experiences and in time speaking with many peers who experienced this too – which led her to start her own support agency for young people experiencing DFV – Kids of Purple. A key message – Navigating adult centric services to access support isn’t workable for young people. The project aims to empower young people to seek assistance and feel heard in their experiences.
Dave – The overwhelm of social media for young people. Some images are highly distressing – such as Police shootings, children being bombed. The materials available to children and young people is of significant concern and impacts developing brains. The subtle way we give messages to children and young people around safety can be counterintuitive. We often focus on controlling emotions which misses freedom of expression and opportunities for learning emotional regulation. Silencing and shutting down emotions is often the consequence of how we respond to concerning behaviour. Information accessed online is via skewed algorithms and of huge concern.
We don’t choose our emotions. Young people can have support and accountability at the same time. Often rapport and connection have never felt safe for these young people. Fear is behaviour. Behaviour is communication.
All presenters:
- Listen, have empathy, build rapport and recognise any behavioural change takes time and significant support and guidance. Ask questions, be curious
- Young people have significant difficulty navigating systems. Not because they have difficulties but because systems are not set up for young people
- The importance of family and connections
- Prevention and intervention as early as possible as key in most social issues, especially DFV and youth homelessness
- Children and young people usually want to go home
- Young men in DFV are often consumed by powerlessness whilst also hearing messages that they have privilege – which they do but these messages are hard to integrate when you’re feeling so unheard.
Bel
- Barriers to achieving change – trivialising and rationalising.
- Coercive control is pattern-based abuse and behavioural – some learned behaviour, some cultural influences, it’s a grouping.
- Impression curation – image or persona is carefully curated for us.
- It’s important to find ways to have the conversations
- Look to future safeguards
- Structures such as policy and procedures to keep records, make good referrals
- Trauma informed accountability helps avoid collusion
- Relationship – Safety VS Risk.
- It’s important to model primary prevention in your work
- Demonstrate gender equality.
Daryl
Experiences of child maltreatment and adversity are not uncommon. 62% of all Australians have experienced one or more forms of abuse or neglect. At the heart of youth homelessness is violence and trauma. To stop abuse we need healing and recovery mechanisms. Many young people overcome adversity and grow up well. We need to intervene early. The health and mental health costs throughout life of early childhood trauma and abuse are significant and cost billions. There is a significant link between maltreatment expeousr and health outcomes. There is a prevalence of children maltreatment amongst diverse sexuality and child maltreatment is disturbingly common in gender diverse people. Research overwhelmingly calls for prevention and early intervention. These statistics matter because we need to drive a prevention agenda. We need a public health approach.
Young people and panellists
- Workers sometimes shut down when you state you’re trans.
- Theres good support and questionable support. Keep doing the good support but listen to young people.
- Young people have many negative experiences. We need to recognise the experiences young people have in their childhood and young adulthood are often created by adults.
- We need to disrupt the overly optimistic message about childhood – Phil.
- We need to continuously try to do better and recognise the personal agency of young people.
- We need not be overly simplistic and recognise this is complex – Phil.
- We need to share stories of home and the amazing people we meet – Phil.
- We need to hold people accountable.
- So many young people have experiences of not being heard.
- Many young people feel they can’t be an individual
- Being independent is often not recognised. Young people go from surviving on the streets to being expected to follow stringent rules and restrictive guidelines in organisations that don’t recognise their capacity or personal agency.
- The trickledown effect of getting tough on crime is every young person is viewed in communities with suspicion.
So many young people who commit offences have had lives of trauma but then they’re still framed as young people ruining other people’s lives. The focus on youth crime has blown out of proportion. ‘We’re being profiled for being a young person.” It leads to people being distrustful of young people.
Young people are individuals and they know when they’re being mistreated and when they need to access supports. Then they need to be heard – lose the seen and not heard – open your minds to change.
The standard we walk past is the standard we accept. Many young people have lived large lives, and they need larger resources to come back from that.
Daryl – we have a level of wilful ignorance – if we know the young people and their experiences, we would feel deeply ashamed of our actions and our inaction when they’re asking for help. Adults owning up to failures is harder than buying into prejudices. “We need to have a more sophisticated conversation”.
Daniel – We’re dealing with insidious and sneaky messaging with social media. There aren’t good kids and bad kids or us and them – all young people have a journey and if they fail it’s our responsibility to get them back to where they need to be.
All governments are trying to solve problems. It could be budgetary, a social issue or other. Finding common ground and remaining solution focused matters. Staying true to your own purpose is key also. Some organisations can go to far in adapting strategies for new governments and others who go all in on government strategy can lose focus. Too much quiet is a problem too.
The role of lived and living experiences and young advocates helps us fight for change. We all need trusted partners.
Daryl – The focus needs to be wellbeing – children and young people deserve to be free from violence, abuse, neglect and adversity.
Tim spoke to the changing nature of policing and its impact on public spaces. The change from foot patrols to rapid response for vehicles changed policy. Policing moved from being preventative and protective to crime control.
The social contract is – if laws are legitimate people are obliged to obey. Underneath this we should only expect people to obey the law if we’re provided appropriate opportunities in life. Economic need shouldn’t lead to crime if appropriate opportunities are provided. Ther is support for getting police back on ‘the beat’.
Models such as Street CRED on the gold coast – highlighted at Platform 1225 2024 focus on blends of these models and a collaborative approach between service providers, police and others.
The Welfare model has law enforcement as a last resort.
Preventative options are much cheaper and there’s less responsibility or livelihood they will be called away to emergencies.
We need more co responder teams.
Obstacles are the competing priorities of State local and federal governments.
