Report on Government Services 2019

Government and non-government specialist homelessness service providers deliver a range of services to clients — including supported accommodation, counselling, advocacy, links to housing, health, education and employment services, outreach support, brokerage and meals services, and financial and employment assistance.

Accessing homelessness services in Australia

Systems for the assessment, intake, referral and ongoing case management of specialist homelessness services clients vary across states and territories, ranging from agency-based to centralised management models. This variation may affect data for specific performance indicators. Three broad summary categories are identified here — table 19A.38 summarises the intake and referral systems used in each jurisdiction and identifies the category with which they most closely align.

• Community sector funding and support — Assessment of client needs and intake into services is managed by individual specialist homelessness service providers in line with State or Territory policies. Referral to other service providers is made if clients’ needs are not able to be met by the initial provider. These systems may be supported by a coordinating service that links clients to local specialist homelessness service providers. Coordinating services may also make an initial assessment of clients’ needs (but do not provide homelessness services directly).
• Central information management — Assessment of client needs, intake and referral is managed by any specialist homelessness service provider using State/Territory central information management tools. The central information management system supports the identification of appropriate services for the client and indicates the availability/vacancy of those services across specialist homelessness service providers. Client information may be shared between providers upon referral (with client consent).
• Central intake — Assessment of client needs, intake and referral is managed by one or more ‘central intake’ agencies. Central intake agencies prioritise client access to services and, for specialist homelessness services, only refer clients as services and/or vacancies are available. Central information management tools may be used to share information between central intake agencies and specialist homelessness service providers.

The NAHA commenced on 1 January 2009. To support the NAHA, a series of one- to three-year NPAHs were negotiated between the Australian Government and each State and Territory government. The NPAH contributes to the NAHA outcome to help ‘people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness achieve sustainable housing and social inclusion’ (COAG 2012, 2015). The NPAH aims to achieve the following outcomes:

• fewer people will become homeless
• fewer people will become homeless more than once
• people at risk of or experiencing homelessness will maintain or improve connections with their families and communities, and maintain or improve their education, training or employment participation
• people at risk of or experiencing homelessness will be supported by quality services, with improved access to sustainable housing (COAG 2015).

As part of broader COAG reforms, the NPAH clarified that State and Territory governments are responsible for day to day delivery of services. It also established an agreed set of desired outcomes for homelessness services, focused on improving the delivery of services to prevent and respond to homelessness.

Government funded specialist homelessness services are jointly funded by the Australian Government and State and Territory governments, via the National Affordable Housing Specific Purpose Payment (for housing and homelessness services) and the NPAH (for housing and support services for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness — matched equally between the Australian Government and State and Territory governments).

Direct expenditure on specialist homelessness services is undertaken by State and Territory governments. Recurrent government expenditure on specialist homelessness services for 2017-18 was $905.1 million (or $36.54 per person in the population; table 19A.1) — 96.2 per cent of which was provided to agencies to deliver specialist homelessness services. The remaining 3.8 per cent was attributed to State/Territory government administration costs (table 19A.1).

Population

Data on the prevalence of homelessness are sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2018).

Nationally in 2016, approximately 49.8 Australians per 10 000 people in the population were homeless on Census night — an increase of 4.6 per cent from 2011 (table 19A.2).

Under the ABS definition for homelessness, there are six homeless operational groups (rates are provided in table 19A.2). The proportion of the homeless population in each group varies. In 2016, people living in supported accommodation provided by specialist homelessness service providers comprised approximately 18.2 per cent of the homeless population. The majority of homeless people were ‘persons living in severely crowded dwellings’ (43.9 per cent) (see section 19.4 for what constitutes ‘severely crowded’). Similar proportions of homeless people were staying temporarily in other households (15.2 per cent) and in boarding houses (15.0 per cent). Only 7.0 per cent of homeless people were in improvised dwellings, tents or sleepers out and 0.6 per cent were in other temporary lodgings on Census night 2016 (ABS unpublished).

Services

ABS 2012, Information Paper: A Statistical Definition of Homelessness, Cat. no. 4922.0, Canberra.

—— 2018, Census of Population and Housing: Estimating homelessness, 2016, Cat. no. 20492.0, Canberra.

COAG (Council of Australian Governments) 2012, National Affordable Housing Agreement, viewed 26 August 2016, www.federalfinancialrelations.gov.au/content/national_agreements.aspx.

—— 2015 National Partnership Agreement On Homelessness — 2015–2017, viewed 18 August 2016 , www.federalfinancialrelations.gov.au/content/npa/housing.aspx.