A voice for the homeless
DR Catherine Robinson and her partner Andrew Hughes enjoy an idyllic lifestyle with their three young children in South Hobart, where a tyre swing hangs from a backyard tree and platypus swim along the rivulet boundary.
Having come from Sydney in 2015, the pace of family life is especially sweet. Robinson cherishes the resonances with her own Tassie childhood.
On weekends, she likes strolling with the kids up to Honey Brown cafe on the main SoHo stretch and watching the world go by at an outdoor table over a flat white.
The homelessness expert and social researcher, who works for Anglicare, is behind tomorrow’s major homelessness forum in Hobart. And she is about to hit the small screen again as copresenter of series two of SBSTV’s Filthy Rich and Homeless.
We are not here today, though, to talk about how fabulous her life is, but of a Tasmania where childhood and family life look nothing like hers.
“Tasmania is not just a dream world awaiting the next wave of Mona-loving hipsters, festival goers and bespoke gin drinkers,” says Robinson.
“It is a place where poverty is rife, families need increased support to stay together and unaccompanied homeless children have few options for safety.”
Robinson is talking not only about homeless youth, but children as young as 10 years old with no one to properly care for them.
“There are two Tasmanias,” she says. “There’s the idyllic Tasmania and if you have either the financial or social and cultural capital, you can have access to that. And, my God, it’s a beautiful life, it really is – and lucky old us.
“But my working life is focused on the lives of children and young people who experience high vulnerability, who do not have tyre swings in their gardens, but may also not have enough to eat or somewhere to sleep that is safe.”
Through her research, Robinson says she sees a state where the human rights of highly vulnerable children and young people are not being met.
“In our bid to be outwardfacing and produce ourselves as a desirable destination, Tasmanians risk losing sight of the realities,” she says.
“As a community, we do have enormous care for housing, home, community and young people, but I am not sure that level of compassion and care is being reflected at a government level.”
What is least understood, she says, is the homelessness of children and teens whose care has dropped outside both families and the state, falling between the cracks of the child protection system and homelessness supports.
“Where is the acknowledgment that children are living traumatically outside the system?” she asks. EXTENDED
families are doing a lot, but they desperately need help, she says.
“They are often so poor that being able to provide for another child may present a real issue, so putting more pressure on families is not the answer.
“We do have a childhood protection system, but the threshold for accessing that system is so high that by default there will always be a large cohort of children [outside it] who have experienced chronic trauma and a trajectory of neglect, abandonment, physical and sexual abuse, or some combination of those.”
Fostering is not an option for them currently as they don’t qualify for it unless they have been subject to a child protection response.
Opening more crisis accommodation is not the answer, either, she says.
“What they actually need is care and the homelessness sector is not resourced to provide that intense level of care for children.
“In a normal youth refuge, there’s one worker on at any one time and maybe eight-11 kids. Imagine as a parent having eight kids, aged between 13-20, with high and complex needs and problem behaviours.
“Is that the sort of environment we think highly vulnerable children should be cared for in?”
Robinson is calling on the State Government to acknowledge this specific care challenge with a policy response similar to the one in NSW, where she sat on a NSW Premier’s Council on homelessness.
Tomorrow’s fully booked forum, More than Crisis Accommodation – How to best provide care for unaccompanied under-16s, will explore different responses to the issue.
After that, Robinson will be appearing onscreen in series two of Filthy Rich and Homeless, a reality TV show in which five high-profile Australians join the ranks of an often invisible underclass who could teach the rest of us a thing or two about courage and survival. National Homeless Week begins on Monday. Filthy Rich and Homeless screens on SBS over three nights, August 14-16. Join the conversation today at themercury.com.au