3 months ago
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For Clara*, the road to homelessness was marked by signs that went unnoticed by her teachers while she was at school.
Her grades suffered, and as her mental health deteriorated, she often fell asleep in class. She stopped brushing her hair and wearing a clean uniform.
Clara says more help is needed to support at-risk young people.Credit: Justin McManus
As her world quietly unravelled, these tell-tale signs, she says, failed to raise any alarm. She fell through the cracks, she says.
Clara is not alone. Data released on Monday by Melbourne City Mission paints a picture of a fragmented support system. Of the 179 young people accessing the mission’s homelessness services on April 8, a third of the 15 to 24-year-olds surveyed had lost their home at 16 or younger, 66 per cent were disengaged from work and education, and four out of five had fled because of family violence.
Three in five young people in the survey aged 19 or under weren’t engaged in study or work, a critical age when people often disconnect from school for good, leaving them behind for the rest of their lives.
Melbourne City Mission chief executive Vicki Sutton said family violence was the most significant driver of young people coming into the charity’s homeless service system once they were old enough to flee.
“For young people, it’s not a choice; moving into the unsafe environment of homelessness isn’t a choice,” Sutton said. “It’s driven by a diabolical decision about being not safe enough to stay at home.”
She said seeing 16-year-olds trying to navigate service systems, and trying to find a safe bed and something to eat, was gut-wrenching.
“It’s wrong, and we as a system need to be doing much better to make sure that as young people are coming in, they’re given that safety very quickly.”
According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, in 2023-24 there were 11,301 unaccompanied Victorians aged 15 to 24 who approached homelessness services for help.
Credit: Pat Scala
Sutton said it had been five years since the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System recommended 500 new medium-term support housing places for people aged 18 to 25 living with mental illness or experiencing unstable housing or homelessness, and they had not yet been promised.
Homelessness in young people often resulted in suicide, she said.
For Clara, asking teachers for help when she was in school was a double-edged sword. Every disclosure, she said, could lead to a call home.
“It felt like I couldn’t trust them because everything I told them would be disclosed, putting me at further risk,” she said. “I fell through those cracks and ended up spending at least eight months in ‘survival mode’, which was physically demanding and emotionally isolating.”
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Clara, now 21, was attending a private all-girls school when she had her first experience of sleeping rough. She became homeless at 19, which meant her grades dropped significantly. Due to her perseverance and resilience, she completed year 12 – sometimes studying through the night next to the State Library.
Melbourne City Mission has provided her with housing and work as a lived-experience adviser, and she is now studying psychology with honours at Victoria University.
Clara is urging teachers to believe young people and always ask permission before sharing their personal information. She also wants school staff to have better knowledge of student homelessness.
According to Melbourne City Mission’s snapshot, the costs of young people being disengaged from study or work add up. On top of lost wages and superannuation, they lead to lower overall workforce participation, resulting in lower tax revenue and a higher reliance on welfare and other public services.
Homelessness Australia chief executive Kate Colvin said school staff could notice sudden changes like frequent absences, reduced participation, acting out, or failing to complete assignments. The issue then was that schools are not well equipped to support young people experiencing homelessness, she said.
“Even if they can observe those changes … if they refer the young person to a homeless service ... those services don’t have the resources to respond to everyone who needs that help.
“What we’d really like to see the federal government do is have a national action plan on child and youth homelessness that would better resource schools.”
Arlo* was about 13 when he started couch-surfing.
“Sometimes I would go weeks or a month without seeing my family, staying anywhere that would take me, on the floor, I slept in cupboards and dog beds,” he said.
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He went to five primary schools and two high schools.
“Every time my mum thought that the school was getting too suspicious, we would move again,” he said. “I think they had to have known. I went to school with bruises and I would miss weeks at a time, and … clothes were always dirty. I think they had to have seen, but there wasn’t anywhere else for me to go.”
He agrees that school staff need more support to help identify children at risk.
A federal government spokesperson said it was investing heavily in social, crisis and transitional accommodation for women and children escaping domestic violence and at risk of homelessness, including through the Housing Australia Future Fund, as well as construction of $1.2 billion of crisis accommodation, which includes the national Housing Infrastructure Facility and the Safe Places Program.
A Victorian government spokesperson said it invested $80 million annually to tackle youth homelessness, delivering more youth refuges and ways for young people to access services, as well as $300 million annually for frontline services
*Not their real names
Lifeline 131 114.
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