Last week QYHC held our Young People Finding Home forum and AGM. It included the official launch of the First Time Renter video and resources. This project was a collaboration between QYHC, Community Connections (CLA), Tenants QLD (TQ), and the Youth Advocacy Centre (YAC). The collaboration was established to bridge the gap in information for young people regarding steps to accessing tenancies in either private rental or public housing.
We were privileged to have Dr Phil Crane as our guest speaker. Dr Crane spoke to notions of home and what home means to young people. This segued into our Hindsight is 2020 video presentation, an emotional and authentic glimpse into the perspective of some young people from Queensland’s Specialist Youth Homelessness Services. We are humbled and grateful for these insights.
As we prepared to end a year of much reflection, one which will be etched into history, we considered the learnings COVID-19 presented us. We saw rapid mobilisation of resources and creative thinking in responding to issues we had never encountered. Above all we saw the commitment and collaboration across both government and the community sector to ensuring our most vulnerable were housed. We move forward with the hope that the speed, intelligence, and dogged determination with which we faced 2020 with will carry forward into 2021.
‘It’s opened up the waterworks of what’s going wrong and what we need to change, a pandemic shouldn’t be the reason why we’ve come to these conclusions around identifying the issues, but we need more services, we need more funding, to make sure the services that do work are being funded to the best of their abilities to support our young people.’ (Jordy, Hindsight is 2020)
At our 2019-2020 AGM we celebrated the achievements of the outgoing Management Committee as well as staff, colleagues and stakeholders. We welcomed our 2020-2021 Management Committee: Megan Hall, Brett Johnson, and Fotina Hardy as Chairperson, Secretary, and Treasurer respectively alongside Allan Mitchell, Cate Ryan, Alvin Hava and Kirsten Firman as General Members. With appreciation and sadness we said thank you and farewell to Christine Hastwell and Alice Thompson, two long standing members of the Committee who have offered significant contributions over countless years to QYHC.
First Time Renter resources and video link: https://www.qyhc.org.au/first-time-renter/
Hindsight is 2020 video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9paMcK5RkkQ
