In response to rising street homelessness Inner West Council, New South Wales, partnered with eight community and state government agencies to form the Inner West Homelessness Outreach Collaboration and has been patrolling the Inner West Council area since 2016.
This collaboration between Inner West Council, state government and homeless services has permanently housed 27 people over the period from January 2019 until June 2020, including many long-term rough sleepers.
Other support provided to homeless people through these patrols has included provision of temporary accommodation; access to medical services and linking people to specialist homeless services including case managers.
The outreach patrols have been easily scaled up during the current epidemic, assisting more people to access the additional hotel beds provided as part of the New South Wales Government’s COVID-19 response.
Why outreach? People sleeping rough are often trying to manage extremely complex challenges.
Instead of expecting people in those circumstances to navigate government offices and processes, outreach teams go to the streets and parks at dawn, in all conditions, to engage with rough sleepers; understand their circumstances and explore housing solutions.
The outreach collaboration forms part of Council’s Homelessness Policy and Strategy.
Other components include:
- annual late-night street count, adding to Council’s data regarding rough sleeping numbers over the past 5 years
- digital story and social media campaign (reaching over 28,000 people with over 15,000 views) aimed at increasing understanding of homelessness and encouraging residents to contact Missionbeat when they notice someone who may need assistance
- whole-of-Council homelessness training and induction program: a tailored interactive, e-learning module for staff from parks, waste services, rangers, customer services, libraries and community services to encourage staff to report homelessness so that outreach workers know where to go and
- operational protocols to guide staff across Council regarding appropriate responses to instances where conflicts or safety issues have been identified.
