Media Release by The Hon Tanya Pibersek MP

Rudd Government provides $3.1 million to improve homelessness services

The Rudd Government today announced $3.1 million in grants to trial new, integrated services to assist homeless people.

Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, announced the funding today at The Road Home – Progress and Lessons Exhibition, which brought together government and non-government representatives to review progress on homelessness reforms.

Ms Plibersek said the funding from the Government’s National Homelessness Strategy would fund 10 projects in regional, rural, and metropolitan areas of Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania.

“These projects will help improve specialist and mainstream service integration at the local level, and feedback from these projects will assist in our national service reforms,” Ms Plibersek said.

“It will also encourage services to work together with the aim of increasing accessibility and improving the quality of services.”

The projects include:

  • A Domestic and Family Violence Services Integration Program in New South Wales which will build on the Staying Home and Leaving Violence Program.
  • Funding for the Western Australian Government for the Anawim Aboriginal Women’s Service to deliver a project that will strengthen and integrate linkages and referral pathways for Indigenous clients.
  • Funding for the South Australia Government to help implement integrated service planning across regional areas of that state.
  • In Queensland, there is funding to develop integrated services for homeless youth and Indigenous rough sleepers in Brisbane and Townsville.
  • In Victoria, funding will assist in the development of a more holistic service response for young people with complex needs and women and children experiencing family violence.
  • Funding for two Tasmanian projects will see homelessness assessment factors integrated into mainstream children and family service assessments, and it will support social enterprise developments at two Common Ground sites.

“These projects will help create an integrated approach to assisting people experiencing or at risk of homelessness, enabling services to offer more help than they could if they were operating alone,” Ms Plibersek said.

“This is the type of approach which is required if we want to address the multiple and complex needs of individuals experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness.”