Page 1140 - Week 03 - Thursday, 18 March 2010
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remember that day most distinctly. This research was funded by the ACT as part of the homelessness strategy.
Obviously, it is important to see children as individuals in their own right. Obviously, it is important to be able to listen to their experiences and for us to understand how these experiences inform us when looking at a homelessness strategy. Children are not just appendages of their parents. Children are individuals who have unique experiences and we need to listen to them and listen to their experiences, their views, their beliefs, their aspirations.
What came out of that study was a toolkit for homelessness services for how to deal sensitively and appropriately in a child-focused way with children in homelessness services. That is an invaluable asset, Mr Assistant Speaker, as I am sure you and all of us here agree.
I think it is very important to understand that the ACT government does have a comprehensive strategy to address homelessness, including looking at the special needs of children, as I was talking about just now. Homelessness is not just about not having a roof over your head. And to be in a home is not necessarily just about having a roof over your head.
That became extremely clear in the results of the research with the children. It was discovered that many of those children, as I recall from listening to the comments that were made by those who did the research on that day and by reading the material that was provided for the toolkit and the results of the research, relayed to the researchers that a home was not necessarily assigned to a place or a building. A home to them was a place, whether other members of their family resided with them, whether one or more of their parents were with them, whether their siblings were with them, even whether their family pets were co-located with them.
So you can see that, when we look at homelessness and how we respond to homelessness, we need to take all these many factors into consideration, particularly when we are responding to the needs of children. And children, of course, are very vulnerable in these situations.
One example of Housing’s approach is the housing accommodation and support initiative which, importantly, provides both clinical management and housing solutions for clients experiencing significant mental health issues. As I said, a person’s ill health is one of the factors that may lead the person to become homeless. The housing accommodation support initiative model is a three-way partnership between Housing ACT, ACT Mental Health and community mental health providers.
When I was in the last Assembly and I was working on the standing committee on health, we did an inquiry into appropriate accommodation for people living with a mental illness. It was brought out time and time again that often a person’s homelessness or living in what they would consider unsuitable accommodation was, in large part, due to the fact that they were suffering from or had suffered from quite significant mental illness in the past or in the present. Of course, that is only one factor in many factors that would affect those people but it is a significant factor
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