2021 Annual Report
When the financial year began in July 2020 we were coming to terms with COVID-19 and being in the midst of a global pandemic. Meeting fortnightly with the then Department of Housing and Public Works and weekly through the QShelter Learning Exchanges. We were working with sector colleagues around responses to health advice and preparations for a potential COVID-19 outbreak. All the while ensuring we were business as usual.
For Specialist Youth Homelessness Services this was a particularly challenging year. As always, they rose to the occasion and engaged with efforts underway or developed their own responses. Business continuity plans were ever evolving!
Developing Contemporary Responses For Homeless And At Risk Young People
In collaboration with Specialist Youth Homelessness Services (SYHS) and the Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy (DCHDE), we identified the need to work with housing and homelessness services across Queensland in order to develop a contemporary response to the needs of Queensland’s young people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness. With the intent to be young-person centred, break down silos in service delivery, and work across the sector and government departments in order to ensure that what young people need is being offered in a holistic way cognisant of their key wellbeing indicators.
These indicators can include being part of a community; having social supports; having access to schooling, work or training; having access to income support; being able to build or strengthen relationships with family, Kin and culture; as well as many others.
As such, this has meant thinking differently about how we describe and deliver specific services, particularly around the stability of housing and the provision of long-term housing options. QYHC has undertaken this piece of work to ascertain what is needed for young people across the housing and homelessness sector in Queensland, and has involved mapping out what is currently in place, as well as recommending further models of service delivery required.
The aim being – to design a system with housing and support responses that meet the contemporary needs of young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
