Youth-specific strategies to address homelessness was one of three wish-list items highlighted by a cohort of The Bridge Youth Service who met with Liberal Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell last month. Ms Lovell asked to visit the service after speaking to Bridge Youth Service Ambassadors at a recent Youth Parliament event in Shepparton and she also addressed an increase in funding for early intervention services and more affordable crisis accommodation.

Former Ambassador Lauren Beks approached Ms Lovell to point out there were a number of voices in the homelessness space, but very few were representing a “lived experience.” She encouraged Ms Lovell to visit The Bridge Youth Service to gain a better insight into the services available to young people and what barriers the organisation’s specialist youth workers were facing when it came to youth homelessness and the pressing lack of emergency housing.

The Bridge provides programs that assist young people, young pregnant youth and young parents who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless to obtain or maintain safe, secure and affordable housing. The Bridge also runs the Sustaining Tenancies at Risk (STAR) program that assists young people to maintain their tenancy and address barriers that may affect their tenancy.

Lauren joined the current Bridge Ambassador Cassie Meloury-Mason, young person Anika Bono, Bridge Youth Services CEO Melinda Lawley, Program Manager Youth Services Renee Ford, and Specialist Youth Worker Hayley Rowan to talk about how homelessness was impacting young people and the challenges faced when trying to meet needs.

Ms Lovell detailed her experiences in the sector when she held the portfolios of housing and homelessness as well as early childhood and children. She acknowledged the challenges for services were only getting greater.

“One of the first things I said when I became the minister for housing and homelessness, was I am not the expert on this, because I have never known what it’s like not to have somewhere to sleep tonight or not to know when my next meal is coming,” Ms Lovell said.

“So, I went to the sector with a bucket of money and empowered the people dealing with these issues and the people experiencing them to design the programs.

“What I was trying to move towards was funding for outcomes because particularly in the homeless sector, you find there is a 12-week episode of support.

“They come in the front door, they go through the 12 weeks, go out the back door and then they are back at the front door again.

“No-one is actually solving their problem in that 12 weeks.”

Ms Lovell said it would be prudent to work with a smaller cohort to try and find solutions rather than working with everybody and not solving any problems. She highlighted collaboration as one of the biggest challenges, but Program Manager Youth Services Renee Ford maintained The Bridge worked hard to collaborate with other service providers.

“Homelessness looks different for our young people,” Ms Ford said. “We have amazing programs and really try to make it holistic in how we work.”

Specialist Youth Worker Hayley Rowan said there was so much more to the support they offered rather than just housing, but collaboration was a strength.

“I think we work really well with the local housing services,” Ms Rowan said. “We have meetings with the other services in the local area and communicate around support periods.”

Ms Rowan said by sharing information people in crisis were able to access different services and address their barriers.

The Bridge CEO Melinda Lawley said the organisation wanted to collaborate, but sometimes that still did not increase access for young people.

“Our innovation here, which the Board funds is to have a psychologist once a week to help that access for young people, to then speed up that support,” Ms Lawley said.

“We’ve been funding that ourselves and we are funding The Nest, which is going to be our three units for young mums in Mooroopna.

“We are looking at innovations out there to get around the weaknesses in the system.”

In paying tribute to The Bridge’s Youth Ambassadors, Ms Lawley said the youth parliament that brought the matter to Ms Lovell’s attention was a great opportunity to hear stories from young people.

“I was just so impressed that Cassie and Lauren attended and shared their stories and their advice,” she said. “And that is part of what we would like to see at The Bridge is that there are young people here who have got experiences that others can learn from.”

Cassie connected with The Bridge four years ago when seeking out a playgroup for her son and to connect with other young mothers. Lauren was also a young mum and she continues to mentor young mothers who are part of The Bridge’s young parents program.

“The Bridge Youth Service is an organisation for youth first, so we have a person-centred approach. Young people come here, things are going wrong, they might not even know what they are, but it’s just not right and will try and wrap those services around,” Ms Lawley said.

“That is what I would like politicians to understand is that segmenting programs into different organisations, particularly for young people, is not particularly effective. We need to support where the young people are rather than sitting services in places that don’t quite understand what it is like for a young person.”

Ms Lovell said the whole sector needed to be really looked at and potentially redesigned.

“We are not getting to a point where we’re reducing the need, it just keeps on increasing and that shows that there is something not right with the programs the way they are because we are not seeing a reduction in demand, but it also shows that there is so much more work to be done, so much more research that needs to be done to really understand this area and the government should work more closely with the workers who are on the ground who are the ones who have the experience and who know what needs to be done,” she said.