Stephen Lunn | April 08, 2008
TEENAGERS Hope Walter and Alyssa Coulter live in different cities but their fractured lives run parallel.
For Alyssa Coulter, 18, life has improved but she remains estranged from her family. Picture: Renee Nowytarger
For many of the nation's bleak army of 22,000 teenage homeless, a path out seems unattainable. But after years of despair living among some of the nation's most marginalised, there is at least a ray of light for 19-year-old Hope from Melbourne, who has recently moved back home with her mother, and for Sydney's Alyssa, 18, trying for a high school education and permanent accommodation.
They may end up two of the lucky ones, but their stories remain grim. Both talk of feelings of utter worthlessness as they dossed on friends' sofas and slept rough before finding support services.
Hope recalls the "massive fight" she had at 17 with her father about her new boyfriend, who was homeless. "He said I had to make a choice, him or my boyfriend, so I ended up on the streets," Hope says. "At first we slept in Flagstaff gardens and then for quite a few months on the porch of a bowls club.
| VULNERABLE AND MARGINALISED |
| "There's no doubt these are tough kids. They come from tough backgrounds and they're tough to deal with. They've got mental health issues, they've got drug and alcohol addictions, some of them have spent their whole lives in state care, some of them have been abused, some tortured, some neglected badly. But because they're tough kids doesn't mean we should put them in the too hard basket and believe that nothing can ever change." Paul Moulds, Salvation Army "There is absolutely no excuse for us to be in a situation where we can talk about national policies on water and the environment but we can't talk about some sort of co-ordinated and effective national policy for the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and marginalised people in our own community." Brian Burdekin, National Inquiry into Youth Homelessness in 1989 author "The way we respond to the needs of ourmost vulnerable and marginalised is alitmus test for the health of our community.For too long we have sidelined the plight of Australia's homeless youth,hoping perhaps that they would somehow disappear." Ian Darling, Caledonia Foundation chairman "Apart from the practical discomfort of moving around, experiencing homelessness is emotional hell. Homeless young people feel scared, frustrated, embarrassed, helpless and vulnerable. Seen as different from other young people, they have a growing sense that there is no hope for them; they become depressed, angry or both. They yearn for what everyone else takes for granted: a place to belong and people who care for them." David Eldridge, National Youth Commission chairman |
"The people who ran the bowls club were kind. They lent us one of those big gas heater things so we could keep warm."
Alyssa's descent into the murky world of teenage homelessness came earlier.
"I moved out from my mum and stepdad at 13. My parents drank and there was domestic violence. I don't why I was singled out but I got pushed out of the family," she says. "I went to one of my mates and lived on the couch for a month. Then I was on the streets for a year, sleeping inside food trolleys in a park.
"When I lived on the street I was stealing cars and stuff, using drugs, heroin. I felt like I was worthless, that no one really cared, and every day was just another day to survive.
"But there was also a funny little family of us street kids."
These two young women are emblematic of young homeless nationwide, according to a critical new report entitled Australia's Homeless Youth, to be released by the National Youth Commission today.
"Almost half of homeless youth who sought help from (emergency accommodation services) said that relationship breakdown with parents or step-parents was the main reason for their homelessness," the report notes.
Funded by the Caledonia Foundation, a benevolent group dedicated to the sustainability of young Australians, the report is only the second to be conducted independently of government. After conducting hearings in all states and territories during the past year, including taking evidence from 319 individuals and participating in four policy forums, it concludes that Australia is falling significantly short in its duty of care towards the nation's most vulnerable.
Since the first independent report, Brian Burdekin's seminal 1989 study Our Homeless Children, the number of teenage homeless has doubled to 22,000. Of the 100,000 homeless Australians on any given night, 36 per cent are 25 or younger, a far cry from the stereotype of the old wino under the bridge. Many are products of the state care system.
Of the young people seeking a bed in emergency accommodation, only one in every two will sleep in sheets.
NYC commissioner David Mackenzie, an associate professor at Swinburne University's Institute for Social Research, says the statistics are unacceptable given the good economic conditions since the 1990s.
"Since Burdekin, the numbers of homeless young people has pretty much doubled," Mackenzie says. "The irony is that in that time we've had improving prosperity, a strong economy, unemployment has come down markedly in an improving labour market. It's very sobering."
Mackenzie points out 22,000 teenagers aren't all living in alleys and on park benches across the country. The definition of homelessness including those "couch surfing" with friends or acquaintances or in boarding houses without security of tenure.
The inquiry found young people quickly lose connection with mainstream society when they become homeless, which is why bolstering early intervention programs is crucial among the NYC's recommendations.
NYC commissioner Wally Dethlefs, a Brisbane Catholic priest who has worked with the homeless for 35 years, says more young homeless people suffer a complex range of issues compared with 20 years ago.
"I'm talking about young people excluded from schools, with mental health problems, in contact with juvenile justice and child protection systems and dealing with drug and alcohol problems," Dethlefs says.
"Some young people, a lot more than there used to be, have all these issues at once. And mental health issues have come far more to the fore in recent times. At the time of Burdekin, it was thought homelessness may cause mental health problems for younger people, but I'd say that is definite now."
The report finds there's a high cost to society in failing to deal promptly with the symptoms and effects of youth homelessness, in the order of $474 million a year.
"Think already of the increased security around homes, the higher insurance premiums people must deal with, the extra police required, the greater load placed on the court system and on the jails," Dethlefs says.
"All of that will worsen if we don't deal with that issue now."
Burdekin addressed this issue in launching the inquiry in March last year. "One of the hardest things we had to do in the original report was to convince government, the pragmatists, the bean counters in Treasury and finance that the costs of not addressing the issues are much higher than the costs of having appropriate policy settings."
The new NYC report sets out a platform for reform, calling on government to provide an additional $1 billion through 10 years to provide additional housing for young homeless people, bolster existing early intervention programs that work well but remain too thin on the ground, and implement other youth services in areas including employment and health. It may find a receptive ear in Kevin Rudd, who has become a champion of the homeless since taking over as Prime Minister. During the election campaign he quietly visited several homeless shelters, and one of his first acts in government was to demand all his MPs do likewise. During the election he pledged $150 million for the creation of new places in crisis shelters.
In January, Rudd announced a white paper canvassing long-term options to reduce the homeless problem during the next decade, putting one of the nation's most experienced welfare advocates, Brotherhood of St Laurence head Tony Nicholson, in charge.
"I don't want to live in a country where we simply discard people," Rudd said at the time. "I don't want to live in a country where we accept people begging on the streets is somehow acceptable to the Australian way oflife."
The NYC report says while relationship breakdown with parents is the prime cause of youth homelessness, many remain homeless because they can't make the transition from emergency or medium-term accommodation into the long-term rental market. It also launches into a trenchant criticism of the state care system and calls for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission to launch a federal inquiry into the system.
"One-third of young people leaving state care are case-managed into homelessness services, highlighting the inadequacy of the leaving care process," the report finds. "A recent study reported that 42 per cent of homeless adults in (emergency accommodation) had been in state care and protection programs when they were young. The fact that years later so many are in adult homelessness services demonstrates that the system has failed many young people."
The report also demands a trebling of the funding for the successful early intervention Reconnect program that began in 2001 (and has led to a significant drop in teen homeless since that date, according to the NYC report).
After living with her boyfriend in a crowded boarding house organised through the Frontyard youth service in Melbourne, Hope's relationship with her boyfriend ended. "We used to fight all the time, living together in that atmosphere," she says.
She credits her turnaround to resisting drugs during her time among the homeless and to the numerous counsellors that saw her through that bleak time. "Without that I don't know where I'd be, but I know I got a lot of good advice about how to rebuild my relationships with my parents. I'm living with Mum and I'm on good terms with Dad so I can go to his house, which is near the city, if I get stuck in town late at night," she says.
Alyssa has no apparent road back to her family. "It was really hard to give up heroin, I'd get off for a couple of days, then go back, then (get off) for a couple of weeks, then go back. But I'm never going back now," she says. She is living at the Oasis youth centre in Sydney's Surry Hills and doing Year 11 at its accredited course. "I did (years) 8, 9 and 10 in two years," she says. "I'm also getting close to having my own apartment, too, so if that comes off, it'd be great."
The girls, similar to the other young homeless men and women to whom The Australian spoke, who are working their way through the system, are inordinately fragile and incredibly resilient. The NYC report, and the experience of the commissioners who listened to all the evidence across the country, makes it clear these young people need government and community support.
VULNERABLE AND MARGINALISED
"There's no doubt these are tough kids. They come from tough backgrounds and they're tough to deal with. They've got mental health issues, they've got drug and alcohol addictions, some of them have spent their whole lives in state care, some of them have been abused, some tortured, some neglected badly. But because they're tough kids doesn't mean we should put them in the too hard basket and believe that nothing can ever change."
Paul Moulds, Salvation Army
"There is absolutely no excuse for us to be in a situation where we can talk about national policies on water and the environment but we can't talk about some sort of co-ordinated and effective national policy for the most vulnerable, disadvantaged and marginalised people in our own community."
Brian Burdekin, National Inquiry into Youth Homelessness in 1989 author
"The way we respond to the needs of ourmost vulnerable and marginalised is alitmus test for the health of our community.For too long we have sidelined the plight of Australia's homeless youth,hoping perhaps that they would somehow disappear."
Ian Darling, Caledonia Foundation chairman
"Apart from the practical discomfort of moving around, experiencing homelessness is emotional hell. Homeless young people feel scared, frustrated, embarrassed, helpless and vulnerable. Seen as different from other young people, they have a growing sense that there is no hope for them; they become depressed, angry or both. They yearn for what everyone else takes for granted: a place to belong and people who care for them."
David Eldridge, National Youth Commission chairman
Stephen Lunn is The Australian's social affairs writer.
