New Campaign calls on housing for vulnerable young people

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Vulnerable young Australians – particular those leaving the child protection system – are often ill-equipped to find somewhere to leave, and experience high rates of homelessness.

Transcript

00:00Brooke Oliver says she lived in about ten residential foster and kinship care placements

00:06growing up.

00:07Oh, it was rough. It was moment to moment, you know, it was survival. We didn't have

00:11much of an option so we had to make do with what we had.

00:15She says she eventually became homeless.

00:18You felt less than everybody else, you know, going to school without a feed or going to

00:21school without a roof over your head and coming back to stressing out about where you're going

00:25to live or where you're going to sleep for that night. It's nothing that a seven year

00:29old should be worrying about.

00:30Now 27 years old and a peer worker in Adelaide, Brooke Oliver says there needs to be more

00:34support for vulnerable young people looking for housing, especially those exiting child

00:39protection systems.

00:40They think that we have the opportunities that everybody else has. We don't have those

00:44opportunities being a young person. We don't have the lived experience to be able to prove

00:48that we can go into private residences.

00:50The first time I experienced homelessness I was nine and then again as an adult I had

00:56to leave my family home.

00:58Tyler identifies as trans-masculine and says a lack of support meant they didn't know

01:01where to turn to for help.

01:03With exiting into homelessness I didn't have the resources or the skills to take care

01:08of myself, to access housing. Not that there was any available but even if there was I

01:14wouldn't have known how or where to access it.

01:17The Hometime National Campaign says about 38,000 unaccompanied young people aged 15

01:22to 17 experience homelessness in Australia each year. They've built Lego houses to

01:26represent the scale of need in SA and are now calling for action.

01:30So the Hometime Campaign is calling on state, territory and federal governments to invest

01:35and build up a dedicated youth housing system which includes 15,000 dedicated tenancies

01:40with the LINC support to help these young people heal and recover and thrive.

01:44The South Australian State Government says it funds five alliances responsible for providing

01:49youth homelessness supports. It says short and medium term options are available to young

01:53people in SA.

01:56For more UN videos visit www.un.org

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