Page 4636 - Week 14 - Thursday, 24 November 2005
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check on the homelessness strategy, I hope I will contribute to a framework for ensuring that our future work and development in evaluating policies and programs does not inadvertently act to decrease the causes of poverty and levels of poverty in our community.
The homelessness strategy is one of the ACT’s key strategies for social change. It sits under the policy framework of the Canberra plan and the social plan. The social plan provides the ACT community with its long-term target of reducing primary homelessness to as close to zero as possible by 2013. The homelessness strategy provides the blueprint through which the community will work together to reduce the level of homelessness as well as its causes and effects. Make no mistake, though, I am in the business of achieving social change.
As Minister for Disability, Housing, and Community Services, my clear mandate is to work with the community to substantially improve the lives of its most disadvantaged and socially excluded members. The government does this through direct service delivery, such as through our disability care, protection and therapy services and through the development of informed and consultative policy. But I believe that social change is more than the sum of its parts or, if you like, the sum of the programs we provide. Social change requires change in our ways of thinking as a community and change in how we structure the community’s institutions, our bureaucracies, our institutions, our community organisations and our service systems.
In developing and implementing the homelessness strategy, we have set out a program of social change and have made a number of significant achievements through this strategy. We have moved from the situation a few years ago, prior to the strategy, where we had a number of stand-alone services for homeless people such as refuges, and mainstream services such as health services and housing services, which homeless people found difficult to access.
Today we have a situation where we are building an integrated service system that works to provide seamless services for homeless people and those at risk of homelessness. For example, we have protocols between mental health and SAAP services to ensure that homeless people get access to mental health services; we move quickly to allocate public housing for mental health clients who are at risk; we have client support coordinators working inside public housing to support tenants and sustain the tenancies of people who would have been evicted and made homeless in the past; we are prioritising emergency accommodation for women and children forced to leave their homes because of domestic violence; and we are working with a model of social inclusion where we build on the strengths of individuals rather than minister to their weaknesses.
One of the key strengths of the implementation of the strategy is that it has been driven by a joint governance model between government and the community sector. The ACT Homelessness Committee comprises members from the ACT government, ACT government agencies and from the community through various peak bodies. Members represent young people, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, older people and the SAAP sector. Other member and peak organisations include ACT Shelter, ATCOSS, and the ACT Churches Council.
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