Our focus on Families and New Beginnings

Victoria’s homelessness service system wasn’t designed for women, children, and young people. Initially focused on individuals, mostly men, evidence demonstrates it needs to change to better serve families and young people.

At Launch Housing, we support diverse family structures, respecting different cultures, backgrounds, and lived experiences. Families come in many forms including parents with children, pregnant individuals, grandparents with grandchildren, and extended kinship structures, especially in First Nations communities. Since 2021, we’ve seen an increase in families needing support and have started redesigning our services and piloting innovative new programs to better respond to their particular needs.

We provide housing and healthcare for pregnant women at risk of homelessness through the Cornelia Program, help families escaping violence recover from trauma at Viv’s Place and at our families crisis accommodation site, integrate education and employment support for young people at our Education First Youth Foyers, and support children’s health, school, and nutrition through our various children’s programs, including the Education Pathways Program.

Key points

This year, Launch Housing assisted families and young people in the following ways:

• 2,471 families supported.
• 80 families (including 142 children) supported in transitional housing.
• 196 children supported across our Education Pathways Program.
• 74% of young people leaving our Foyers were enrolled in study, employed or both.
• 49 families supported in our families crisis accommodation

Piloting new solutions to support an overburdened system

Families and young people come to us for housing and support when escaping unsafe homes. It is one of the most common reasons women, children and young people use our services.

Women escaping family and domestic violence make up almost 40% of all people seeking homelessness services in Victoria, and homelessness due to family and domestic violence has increased by 10% annually. This increase has meant the systems supporting women and children escaping domestic violence are overwhelmed. There is not enough appropriate crisis, transitional or long-term housing in our system to support the increasing numbers of women, children and young people needing a safe place to live.

A safe home with purpose-built security and support services like Viv’s Place and Cornelia provide solutions directly aligned with government priorities to enable women and children escaping violence to rebuild, recover and thrive.

Viv’s Place: Rebuilding and recovering from trauma

Viv’s Place is an Australian-first apartment building providing safe, long-term housing and support tailored to women, children and young people escaping family violence and homelessness – a safe and secure place to rebuild and recover from trauma.

This year, 60 women and more than 80 children were living at Viv’s Place, with First Nations residents making up 15% (22). Since its commencement, Viv’s Place has supported 75 women and 103 children. There have been 15 exits, 13 of which resulted in women moving into private rentals or long-term housing with family or friends. This is a great outcome — these women have avoided staying in motels or with the person who was using violence against them and are now living independent lives on their own terms.

The successful pilot of Viv’s Place led to it winning three awards last year: Diversity in Housing Award, Pioneering Award, and the Judge’s Commendation at the Victorian Australian Apartment Advocacy Awards.

We thank the generous support of our donors that have made Viv’s Place a place for women and children to rebuild and recover. We send our thanks to:

• Australian Nursing & Midwifery Federation, Victoria Branch
• Barb & Louis Delacretaz
• Gandel Foundation
• Gill Family Foundation
• Grigg Family Fund
• Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation
• Robin and Mary Lou Friday & the Friday-Ferrell-Hudson-Maher Family
• The Ian Potter Foundation
• The Jack Brockhoff Foundation

Cornelia Program: Thriving mums and bubs

The Cornelia Program is another Australian-first initiative that aims to break the cycle of homelessness and support pregnant women and new mothers. Operated in partnership with the Royal Women’s Hospital and Housing First, the program provides women with 12-months of supported housing and maternal and child health care.

It is life-changing and life-saving support. This year, 48 women and 29 babies were supported by our Cornelia Program, providing a safe, stable and supportive start to life for newborns and a caring environment for mums.

The program prioritised support for women from First Nations and diverse backgrounds. 40% of Cornelia clients were culturally and linguistically diverse, and 14% identified as First Nations.

“I feel really proud, incredibly lucky and grateful for this life I have, and a second chance.”

Cornelia Program Client

Pregnant women are even more at risk of violence. If violence already exists, it is likely to escalate during pregnancy. If they leave a violent home into homelessness, this insecurity and unpredictability interferes with the mother’s ability to create a safe and familiar environment in which children can learn and develop.

Supporting women to find secure housing upon exit is a key priority of the Cornelia Program. 26 women exited the program, with 22 moving to social housing, 2 into permanent housing, 1 with family, and 1 into a private rental. These are great outcomes and represent 26 women who can safely bring up their child without needing to return to an unsafe living situation.

That’s why we are looking to scale up our work by developing another apartment building that builds on these successful pilots by combing the best of Viv’s Place with the best of the Cornelia Program to provide an integrated program and safe housing for more women and their children. A second building that houses and supports women escaping violence will add to Victoria’s housing stock, help ease the pressure on other parts of the services system and help break the cycle of homelessness for pregnant women, mothers and children escaping violence.

Thank you to Paul Ramsay Foundation and the John and Maadi Einfeld Fund, a sub-fund of Australian Communities Foundation for your support for the Cornelia Program. The Cornelia program is also generously supported by other philanthropic partners via the Royal Women’s Hospital.

Intervening early to break cycles of homelessness

For many young people, the family home isn’t a safe place to live. Leaving violence to try and enter an incredibly tight rental market, is leading many young people to resort to couch surfing, crisis accommodation, sleeping in cars or on the streets.

In Victoria:

• 25% of all people experiencing homelessness are young people aged 12-24.
• People aged 16-24 experience the highest rate of homelessness of all age groups.
• 7,000 young people aged 12-24 are homeless on any given night.

For 10 years, Launch Housing has been supporting young people to break the cycle of disadvantage and homelessness through our Education First Youth Foyers. For young people, having a safe home, help with their education and employment aspirations and a chance to build social connections is the stability and support they need to thrive and enjoy life no longer defined by their experience of homelessness.

Launch Housing’s early interventions and support programs for children and young people, like the Education First Youth Foyers and the Education Pathways Program, are helping children and young people at key stages of life and learning.

Education First Youth Foyers: Improving education and employment outcomes

Conventional responses to youth homelessness often focus on problems and needs. Our Education First Youth Foyers challenge this by building aspiration, capability, and opportunity. Launched in Melbourne in 2013 with partners the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, Holmesglen Institute, and the Victorian Government, the model expanded to Broadmeadows in 2014, in partnership with Kangan Institute. To date, 578 young people have graduated from these Foyers.

Education First Youth Foyers provide integrated education and supported accommodation for young people aged 16-24. These young people have a safe home for two years, on-site TAFE education and support workers who support them with life skills and connections to community and work opportunities. An EFY Foyer is so much more than two years of supported accommodation. At its core is an approach called ‘advantaged thinking’ which taps into the goals and ambitions of young people, nurtures their talent while building skills for life.

The model works. The Foyer Foundation, Australia’s national Youth Foyer accreditation and advocacy organisation, reports that across all the Youth Foyers in Australia:

• 80% of students exit into stable housing
• 65% of students secure employment
• $172,000 in cost savings to the Government per Foyer student, compared to a similar young person in other SHS accommodation over 40 years

Our Education First Youth Foyers also provide a culturally responsive service to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people so that they can continue to nurture their talents and achieve their goals in a way that is connected to Culture, Country and Community. In 2020 the Victorian Aboriginal Housing and Homelessness Framework endorsed the EFY Foyer model as being appropriate and responsive for First Nations young people. They recommended that an EFY Foyer model be immediately funded for an Aboriginal-specific cohort.

The EFY Foyer model is the only Foyer model in Australia to receive such endorsement and why it is so important that more young people, and particularly First Nations young people, can have access to the opportunities an EFYF provides.

That’s why we are advocating to build a third Education First Youth Foyer, located in Melbourne’s West where our research has shown the greatest need.

“Once I was at the Foyer, I had safe, secure and affordable housing. This meant I could focus more on my schooling; I didn’t have to worry about affording textbooks and resources. I was also offered tutoring. Foyer helped me to establish the life skills required to live an independent and healthy lifestyle — these are skills I still carry today.”

Kayla, Foyer graduate.

Education Pathways Program: A bright future

Our Education Pathways Program (EPP) is one of the only programs in Victoria that supports children who are overcoming the trauma of homelessness to engage in school and address gaps in their learning.

The EPP is a specialist early intervention program provided at Launch Housing’s South Melbourne families crisis site and Viv’s Place. It supports children to engage or re-engage with education, break the cycle of disadvantage and achieve their full potential. Since it started in 2015, we have continued to see increased engagement and attendance at schools and in group activities, children feeling a sense of belonging, and increased parenting capacity, as parents and carers feel confident in their abilities to support their children’s education.

An evaluation of EPP found that between 2015 and 2018, the program supported 187 children, and that it had improved educational outcomes for most children. Over that period, EPP enrolled nearly 80% of the children in kindergarten and primary school, all of whom were attending school regularly. The evaluation also highlighted that EPP ensured that children stayed connected with learning even when living arrangements changed. Fifty-two children transitioned to new schools when they moved to long-term accommodation, and 90% of those children continued to attend school regularly after EPP support ended.

Through EPP we have also supported schools and teachers to improve their understanding of how homelessness impacts learning and provide trauma-informed responses at the classroom and whole-of-school level.

This year:

• 196 children stayed in school with support from the EPP.
• 5,640 breakfasts served, so kids don’t go to school hungry.
• 372 referrals made to healthcare providers, so kids get the care they need.
• 66 children who needed development plans received an assessment, so they get the learning support they need.
• 100 primary school teachers participated in the capacity building sessions, so teachers can better embed trauma-informed practices in their teaching.

We thank our partners for their generous donations to the EPP.

• Mazda Foundation
• Rokon
• The Arthur Gordon Oldham Charitable Trust, managed by Equity Trustees
• The Flora & Frank Leith Charitable Trust
• The Gething-Sambrook Family Foundation
• The Ross Trust
• Zig Inge Foundation

Supporting children affected by family and domestic violence

Our specialist children’s support services, which provides holistic support for children affected by family and domestic violence or homelessness, have increased the number of children they support for the third consecutive year. This year, our specialist children’s services supported 211 children.

Our children’s teams offer assessments, enhanced case management, therapeutic support, and recreational programs for children and families. We aim to develop children’s social, emotional and physical wellbeing and help to improve educational and developmental outcomes.

Advocating for systems change and coordination

Our Families and New Beginnings programs are largely supported by our generous philanthropic partners. Their support enables us to help parents and their children find a safe home, supports kids to learn and make friends, and helps us continue building an evidence base to advocate for investment to scale our innovative programs.

Looking ahead to next year

Family and domestic violence, housing and homelessness responses require a strong focus on providing long-term supportive housing with wraparound support. It’s proven to provide lasting solutions for families who need stability, security and support to rebuild their lives.

Looking ahead, we will look to scale up our programs that we know work including Viv’s Place, Cornelia Program, Education First Youth Foyers and EPP. We will be looking for government, philanthropic and corporate support to build another Viv’s Place and expand our Education First Youth Foyers to other priority locations across Victoria.

We will also continue advocating to design a homelessness system that caters specifically for families, children and young people to ensure they have the supports and services they need, accessible in a way that is safe and won’t create additional trauma.

To our philanthropic partners, thank you so much for your generous support for our families and new beginnings programs. Your donations help us fill the gap in the current service system, and changing the lives of women, children and families for the better.

• Barb & Louis Delacretaz
• Bowness Family Foundation
• Brian M Davis Charitable Foundation
• Goldsmith Family Foundation
• Kapscalu Rejenerative Fund and RO Fund, sub-funds of Australian Communities Foundation
• Mark Boughey
• Peter and Ann Robinson Foundation
• The Jack Brockhoff Foundation
• The Gray Family Charitable Trust
• The Jack and Ethel Goldin Foundation
• The Jack Brockhoff Foundation

And generous individuals and families who would prefer to remain anonymous