When you have a roof over your head, you can get on with life; family and friends can visit; you have an address for forms and applications; you can enroll your children in school; you are eligible for support from services; you can feel basic safety! If you don’t have one, life becomes unbelievably tough!
Our Youth and Families Homelessness Service at Auburn is very fortunate to come with transitional accommodation. Many of the families and young people coming into our program do not have anything but some bags of clothes. For example, in the past 6 months, we have helped 2 families whose houses burned down and a young pregnant mum who recently aged out of her foster family placement.
Supporting families and young people at risk of homelessness includes a lot of practical and material assistance, especially at the beginning.
Along with all the family support case management, our team is also helping to set up properties for families to move in.
We provide weekly groceries from Oz Harvest. So, pandemic or not, we regularly move around a lot of stuff!