homelessness in Melbourne

Mothers afraid to seek welfare | The Australian

The report, The Right to Belong: Family Homelessness and Citizenship by Melbourne-based homeless agency Hanover and Swinburne University, finds increasing numbers of homeless women worry that child protection authorities see homelessness as failure to provide adequate care for their children, and opt to stay out of a system that could give them much needed help.

"Unfortunately there is a real tension in family homelessness between women's role in caring for their children and the rights of those kids to care and protection," Hanover chief executive officer Tony Keenan said. "For these women, homelessness was associated with the loss or fear of the loss of their kids in a very real sense."

Melbourne mother of two Sue and her 16-year-old son, Jake, represent the changing face of Australian homelessness, with 26,000 families homeless across the country at the latest count, primarily as a result of family breakdown and domestic violence.

Sue, 48, said she had been a full-time working single mother with a steady job as her two sons grew up, but when her youngest, Jake, turned 10 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and the family's life spiralled out of control. Her oldest son turned to drugs and became violent at home.

"The cancer was the easy part. In the years since, the radiation treatment has left me with really bad osteoporosis," Sue said.

"No insurance, and no back-up from any family left me with nothing. I quickly lost my job, my house, my car, and my health was really bad. We ended up in friends' houses, in hotels, in caravan parks.

"I certainly worried at the time that I could be seen as not looking after my children, and that made me think about how I sought help."

Now in emergency accommodation with Hanover, Sue said things were still pretty much day to day five years after she first became homeless. She and Jake, who is doing a TAFE course, are hoping for a more permanent housing place soon.

"I'm still so disabled, my bones are so weak, he has to do a lot of things other 16-year-olds don't need to worry about, like hanging out washing, making beds, doing the vacuuming," she said.

Mr Keenan said the study, a survey of the attitudes of women in homeless families, showed their key need was normality, stability, routine. "Three-quarters (of the women) now felt that they did not belong anywhere," he said.
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