YAA Conference News - Square One New Homelessness Initiative for Tweed

The Tweed community had got right behind the development of a new crisis facility for homelessness people, Square One, instigated by local State Government Member Geoff Provest.

$1m has already been pledged by the corporate sector in the town, North Coast TAFE is partnering up to place building, plumbing and electrical trades apprentices to work on the renovation of the targeted premise, and community services, including senior citizens groups, are part of a broad based response to finding solutions to the 184 rough sleepers in Tweed.

It's all been the result of Provest's direct encounters with the homeless and the barely managing in the town. Provest spends time each week accompanying local police, ambulance and community organisations as they go about their nightly and daily patrols, and it was coming across two young adolescent girls living in a tent on Coolangatta Golf Course, and a father leaving his three young children in Provest's office after declaring that he just couldn't look after them anymore that stirred Provest into action.

'I didn't know there were 184 rough sleepers in Tweed, I didn't know anything about the level of domestic violence', Provest said, 'until I got out there with services like you who are at the coal face'. Provest urged homelessness services to broaden the reach of the education they do on homelessness to stimulate a 'whole of community response' to homelessness.

Kevin Crowe, President of YAA, opened the Conference acknowledging that everyone in the homelessness sector in NSW has been working tirelessly this year to keep on top of the changes that have followed on the White Paper'. But, he warned, there is more to come with the release of the NSW State Plan to tackle homelessness, and national level changes to JPET and child protection.

The YAA Conference, Youth Homelessness Matters 09, will run over October 12th and 13th and be followed with a sector training day on the 13th.