History Narrative - August 2015
1. Introduction
I spose I have been around a bit in this sector for some time. Mostly in the ‘policy’ and ‘advocacy’ world, but have also had the experience of running services when YAA had a number of temporary auspices some years ago.
I have had the opportunity to tell fragments of this story and various forums around Australia and around the world.
Where ever I have been – particularly overseas, people are inspired by what the community and sector and government and academics here in Australia did by starting a revolution that put ‘youth homelessness’ in the policy light.
They are equally inspired by what has transpired since, and in the US, Canada and Europe look to what happens here and the work that you all do for leadership.
The work that has been done here has been energised by the revolution from the sector, the advocacy and innovation and fuelled by the goodwill from govt to provide funding ( albeit with some dopey caveats / and administration and planning nightmares ) …
Most of the innovation has come from the sector the community and through listening to what young people need, Govt has provided funding and than tried to track the current innovation and then claim it as their ‘homelessness plan’. For example: “Foyers” are on the landscape because of the work that Yfoundations, Southern Youth and Families, LYAAC did in the early 2000’s.
2. History - What ever happened to the revolution ?
The tell this story I had dig into the dusty Yfoundations archives, its not just a chronology but I hope tell a narrative of how things have changed and how the sector has changed.
Our response to youth homelessness was very different before the 1970’s.
Youth Homelessness was an invisible problem that the charities and institutions looked after.
Pejorative words such as ‘street kids’, ‘street urchins’ ‘ street arabs’ ‘neglected children,’ ‘juvenile delinquent’ and concepts such as ‘keeping the kids off the streets’, ‘child saving’, ‘apprehension and detention’.
If I go way back, the neglected and criminal children’s act of 1864 defined neglected children as:
“Any child found wandering about or frequenting any street thoroughfare tavern or place of public resort or sleeping in the open air and who should not have any home or settled place of abode or any visible means of subsistence” (Jaggs 1986)
The response was to lock them up in an orphanage and to ‘resocialise’.
Pictures of orphanages etc … Oliver, stolen children, JJ
In the 1960’s and early 1970’s, something started to change in government, “a quiet revolution”, we saw the first youth advisory councils, youth and community services bill, the Duke of Edinburgh awards, youth services policy and the first Minister for Youth and Community Services in NSW 1972.
The election of Gough Whitlam in 1972, accentuated these trends embracing services to youth as part of programs of welfare … for all Australians (Maunders Irving and Sherington – 1995 )
Whitlam set the scene for the emergence of small local community NGOs and the possibility of youth refuges.
First youth refuge in Australia was Kedron Lodge in 1972 in Qld. A partnership between the church services and NGO Brisbane Youth Services, Kedron Lodge became the heart of an independent youth support service which bore the name of the building. It was a very particular service within community and government welfare facilities, where homeless boys and girls, generally between the ages of 13 and 17 were welcomed into a true “home” atmosphere at Kedron Lodge. They were given adequate time to re-establish their lives in the framework of The Lodge, encouraged with educational and vocational programs and then they are supported to move into independent accommodation, which introduced them to caring for themselves – but with Kedron Lodge to come home to at any time.
The first refuges in NSW appeared in 1975 – 1976 … Caretakers, Young Peoples, Wanbinga (Doonside – now gone) and Taldemunde similar to Kedron Lodge as an alternative to the large state or church run institutions.
Youth homelessness became a public issue volunteers, workers, young people and the community took the issues to the street. Its really interesting looking at the photos from these days, just how young the workers and activists are.
In those days people, volunteers and workers would organise busses and drive down to Parliament house and protest.
As Narelle Clay noted back in 1994 at the 1st national homelessness conference … ‘the youth homelessness sector was well organised, even in pre SAAP days’.
The movement was quick to organise itself into a peak organisation
YAA began in 1979 as the Youth Refuge Action group, locate at Burnside in Blacktown, with 18 member services.[1] Which was a group of workers in services who got together to discuss problems and break down the extreme isolation which existed between them, share information and support each other. Foundation members at the first meeting (on record) were:
Annandale Young People’s Refuge : Eva Shervashidze, Margaret Bail
Bankstown Youth Refuge: Peter Holt, Chris holt, Kerry May, Geoff Garnen, John
Blacktown Youth Refuge : Peter Cronau, Lesley Moore
Fairfield Youth Refuge: Steve Warren
Kings Cross : Kaye Garner
Caretakers Cottage – Paddington : Laurie Matthews
Taldemunde – North Sydney: Paul Borger.
From the minutes of the first meeting 19-9-79 [2] they agreed that
“YRAG would be a vehicle for lobbying (using simple statistics); info sharing; support and an arena for sharing ideas and new methods being implemented in the refuges”
After a few meetings he group shifted from being about ‘reflection’ and ‘support’ towards ‘action’ and ‘advocacy’. In David Annis Brown’s words
”We decided that things needed changing outside of our services, that just talking about it amongst ourselves wasn’t going to do much and that we needed a base from which to work for change”
Paul Van Ryk notes that “It’s very important to recognize an acknowledge that many of the workers in supported accommodation and housing politics and servicing were from backgrounds of radicalization in broader struggles - women’s rights, Aboriginal rights, gay and lesbian rights, and early environmental struggles; and it’s important first to recognize that many of us who worked in the supported accom area also did considerable work in the housing sector being critically involved in the various versions of Shelter at State and national levels. It was this that led us to making the connections between the personal and the political when it came to looking at root causes of homeless among the young people we dealt with and to knowing that only operating on a case-work band aid approach was inadequate. We knew that we would get little unless the pillars of sexism, racism and homophobia were continually undermined in our relations with each other in the workplace, with our funders, and with young people”
Twenty ten - The activism we did back then was not just about ‘youth homelessness’ policy or homelessness funding arrangements.
The Government listened to our noise. A landmark report at the time was the Standing Committee on Social Welfare – Homeless Youth 1982. There is a feeling of déjà vu when you read through the issues raised and the lessons not learnt.
In the 1970’s we had the Homeless Person Assistance Program, which mainly funded homeless men projects, but there was some trickle down into youth services.
Prior to SAAP, we had the national Youth Services Scheme (YSS) to provide emergency accommodation, referral and info for young people under 18 described as ‘runaways’ or ‘street kids’. An evaluation of YSS, “One Step Forward” emphasised the need for thinking ‘Beyond Refuge’ for longer term housing for young people.
Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) merged funding from Commonwealth Homeless Persons assistance program, family support services (accom program), State govt general programs, womens emergency service program, state govt women refuge programs, child services program for child care in womens refuges, youth services scheme, state govt youth accommodation program. At the same time Crisis accommodation Program CAP was introduced and linked to SAAP as part of the Commonwealth State Housing agreement. CAP was established as capital funding for SAAP services. The Crisis Accommodation Program (CAP) is part of the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA). CAP has traditionally funded the construction or acquisition of buildings for Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) funded services. Examples include shelters, crisis accommodation, medium-term housing for people in transition from crisis to longer-term more stable accommodation options.
What has passed out of memory is the initial rationale and logic for distribution and equity of resources in NSW which saw SAAP fund a smaller number of better funded ‘women’s refuges’ and a greater number not so well funded ‘youth services’. The current crisis for viability for Youth services originate historically from this ‘logic’.
In 1986 a 'young homeless allowance' - The homeless youth allowance was developed by the Hawke government. This ensured that young people 16 and over could get a benefit if they could not live at home. Young people had to wait 6 weeks before they could access the money. The waiting period was removed in 1990.There was a lot of controversy associated with this by family groups and parents who thought it broke down the family unit.
The First Youth Refuges: From Peter Cronau’s notes that early youth refuges used the ‘house parents’ model, where the first refuge paradigm was that their residents needed ‘love’ and ‘restoration of family’ they often employed house parents to do this. Apparently there was a rapid turnover of staff ‘houseparents’ This was phased out over the years in preference for the ‘youth worker’ model. From Paul Van Ryk’s notes: “Many of us also had very strong critiques of the family as it was then socially constructed and again recognized the need to conduct work in questioning and challenging this construction, which at times put us at odds with other childrens and youth services, and certainly continually made us less than popular with governments and funders.
So by the early 1980s gradually as volunteers were replaced by paid staff, volunteers remained involved as members of management committees and boards. Workers became unionised and further organised. The peaks and the unions worked close together. Most services had a flat line collective structure, rather than the lime of management structures that we have today. Often workers rights were blurred with the advocacy for young people. At the time YAA was considered to be a radical left wing organisation.
Youth Homelessness was a ‘contested space’. Youth Refuges were accused of making it easy for young people to leave home. Often in the media young people were blamed for their homelessness. There was lots of talk about the ‘system’ and workers thought they were outside the ‘system’ and were there to advocate for young people in regards to the ‘system’.
In the sector there was lots of talk about ‘social justice’ and the ‘system’ Workers thought they were outside the ‘system’ and were there to advocate for young people in regards to the ‘system’.
Some cynics thought that as soon as services received funding they were really agents of the state dressed in Levi’s.
Deficit model thinking. Though the statement of philosophy on the Nth Coast service, shows evidence of a more strengths based – youth centred approach.
Going back to Narelle’s statement … ‘the youth homelessness sector was well organised, even in pre SAAP days’ in my analysis of the archives I can see that as the sector was organized through peaks such as YAA and unions they were able to communicate a ‘solidarity’ and ‘unified youth sector position around best practice’.
YAA staff and members collectively communicated this solidarity in a number of ways.
Conferences. General meetings and forums.
Though between 1993 and 2007 YAA was not able to run conferences
Much more political and diverse, often the conferences were working and organising conferences (eg forming NYCH) rather than presentation conferences and we have tried to bring elements of this back into this conference.
They used to have interesting conversations in the early days at YAA general meetings … e.g report from the YRA Philosophy Committee in 1980 deciding to break up into two committees.
Training, YAA and the sector used to be funded to run its own worker training, funding for this was cut in 1990 and the IP was passed on to the youth sector training council then later became the SAAP Training Unit, then FACS Learning and Development Unit.
The three peaks partnership on the IP project is a step back into this direction.
We still do Health training. Photo of the HOT game in the early 1990s.
They had just invented the dry ink photocopier, so in those days we used to make customised manuals recording the workshops, we compiled the info into a ‘young worker induction’ manual.
Campaigns.
Publications.
During the 1980s services where arranged by into three models Crisis (1-3mths), Medium (6-12mths) and Long Term / Multi house (up to two years) Services did more than just provide a bed. The national program of funding enabled national standards of case management and outcomes to be established.