WORDS Virginia Small

The system is not doing enough to help young people who find themselves out of home, says Brisbane priest Fr Wally Dethlefs who was involved in the National Youth Commission’s independent inquiry Into youth homelessness released earlier this year.

One bitterly cold, late winter afternoon, my coat collar pulled around my ears, a chill rising from the pavement, I was waiting for my young son but impatient to get home to the warmth. Then I noticed a young man making a bed for himself against a church wall.

It sounds patronising to recount it, but I was intrigued by the great care he was taking straightening and smoothing each of the corners of a blanket on the concrete ground. Once satisfied with these details, he proceeded to construct a low wall around it with flattened cardboard boxes from a nearby dumpster. His accommodation was frail, vulnerable and appalling, yet there was such profound dignity in the methodical way he performed the task of its construction and the evident experience he had in the process. It still humbles me in all its tragic detail now.

But this solitary young out-of-home man is not really alone. He actually belongs to a group of 22,000 12 to 18-year-old Australians.
Even worse, he represents the 50 per cent of this group who are turned away from youth refuges every night because facilities are strained to capacity.

At the Fifth National Homelessness Conference in Adelaide in May, Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd released a green paper on youth homelessness describing it as ‘a national obscenity’.

Brisbane Catholic priest Father Wally Dethlefs amplifies this, ‘The system is failing young people in extremely bad ways’.

Father Wally is Project Officer for Marginalised Students at Catholic Education in Brisbane but his involvement with the homeless and marginalised began way back in 1973 when he set up one of the first refuges in Brisbane. Living in the house gave him what he calls ‘an apprenticeship’.

‘I listened to the stories of young people and heard stories of incredible suffering that was preventable’, he says.

Since then, Father Wally has continued his work with out-of-home young people, is chaplain to a juvenile detention centre in Brisbane and is also involved in policy change and legislation.

‘Out-of-home’, explains Father Wally, is the nationally accepted way to describe young way people who are literally rootless. They may also be ‘couch surfing’ (staying with extended family or friends on an itinerant basis), in foster care, moving all the time, living in state group homes or with extended family.

A landmark enquiry into youth homelessness released earlier this year enlarged on his concerns saying: ‘We have reached a turning point in time that will either be seen as a watershed for change or an opportunity lost forever.’

‘Australia’s Homeless Youth’, a report of the National Youth Commission Inquiry into Youth Homelessness, based its evidence on 319 people, 91 submissions and 21 public hearings around Australia.

This has been the second independent inquiry into homelessness, the first was the 1989 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity headed by Brian Burdekin. It was the Burdekin Report that can be credited with putting youth homelessness onto the national agenda.

‘Since the Burdekin Inquiry our sense of compassion has been lost’, says Father Wally.

‘But we’ve been given a shot in the arm with it being placed on the national agenda again when Prime Minister Rudd visited homeless youth before the election where no media was present, and after the election instructing his ministers to go to homeless shelters and report back in two weeks.’

This information was to provide the basis of the Prime Minister’s Green Report ‘Which Way Home?’.

Father Wally says Australia needs to embark on community education to ‘blow away myths that are around’ (concerning homeless youth).

‘Only 3% of homeless youth are leaving “good” homes’, he says. ‘The child protection system is failing young people right across the nation and this is feeding into juvenile justice, indigenous young people, correctional facilities, homelessness and mental health.’

He quoted research that he has conducted in Queensland schools. He says there are 15 out-of-home young people per 1,000 in all Queensland schools and 14 per 1,000 in all Catholic schools, including primary schools.

‘My research found that the problem was worse than anyone had imagined… You could extrapolate from that and say it was universal to Australia’, he says.

Factors contributing to homelessness include the burgeoning rental crisis with higher rent costs and declining home affordability, a drop in public housing, the breakdown of the extended family, and the associated loss of local community. Other factors are low youth wages and the casualisation of the workforce where employment may be only short-lived.

‘The safety mechanisms are no longer around’, he explains.

An increase in child abuse has also contributed to the deterioration.

‘The whole childcare system needs work. The figures for verified abuse and neglect are going through the roof, we have a national epidemic’, says Fr Wally.

Father Wally is calling for increased funding for the early intervention Reconnect program. Reconnect works through schools to provide family mediation and connect families with services. Cases are followed through by youth support coordinators.

In addition, there needs to be a national approach to homelessness coupled with new models and local initiatives. Father Wally said that an additional $100 million of new funding is required over the next three years and an extra $20 million each year for at least the next ten years to support a range of services needed to help out-of-home youth, including employment services, vocational training and drug, alcohol and mental health services.

There are economic benefits to tackling this issue, argues Fr Wally. The net benefit to Australia of early intervention is about $474 million. If the cost of family homelessness prevention was added, to account for the number of younger children involved, the net benefit would be more than $900 million.

‘The cost of not addressing this will be greatly more significant’, he says.
 

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