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People living on the streets and women experiencing domestic, family, and sexual violence experience higher rates of morbidity and mortality than the general community. Economic factors such as income and high rents, combined with significant health conditions, all contribute to barriers in accessing both healthcare and safe and affordable housing.

Brisbane City Council provided funding of $1 million over 5 years to assist in developing partnerships and initiatives. Micah Projects also has funding to address health inequality in partnership with Queensland Health (Housing and Homelessness Programs), St Vincent’s Health Australia (DV Nurse), Mater (Brisbane Common Ground), Flannery Foundation, and PHN South and North Brisbane.

The Keeping Families Together (KFT) Supportive Housing pilot project was launched in Brisbane to provide supportive housing for families experiencing multiple vulnerabilities (i.e.,extremely low income, at risk of or experiencing homelessness, and at risk of or experiencing intervention by the child protection system). Funded for an initial 12 months by the Queensland Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy, and delivered by Micah Projects and Common Ground Queensland, the pilot brought together a multidisciplinary team of experts to deliver secure and affordable housing for 20 families, along with intensive and holistic family supports.

Homeless patients have complex health care needs leading to the person to take to emergency and hospital care to fulfil their health care and subsistence requirements, many of these ED presentations could be better and more efficiently managed in primary care settings.4 Hospitals and ED handle acute health issues well but they are not well equipped when having to manage the chronic multi-morbidities which require continuous care3. Primary health care services on the other hand, can provide continuous care for existing medical and psychosocial conditions as well as delivering preventative health care to this population. The Integrated Care Model Demonstration Model (Homefront) Program described in this report aim to address and overcome the issues described above pertaining to the overuse of EDs for non-urgent health care.

Document Co-ordinated by Karyn Walsh for the Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH).

This paper brings together our journey and thinking about how we continue the progress made to end homelessness in Brisbane.
It reflects conversations, practice wisdom, feedback from people with lived experience, policy makers, practitioner’s experiences and ideas. And is informed by international, national, and local evidence—based practice, including emerging practices, to the ever changing economic and social circumstances of a city such as Brisbane.

This is a place-based reflection and experience. We have worked with Community Solutions USA and a national community of practice through the Australian Alliance to End Homelessness in developing the Brisbane Zero Project.

For more information, see brisbanezero.org.au

A short version of the 'Towards an Equitable and Inclusive Housing System for All Housing' Discussion Paper.

Document Co-ordinated by Karyn Walsh for the Brisbane Alliance to End Homelessness (BAEH).

For more information, see brisbanezero.org.au

During the height of the COVID-19 crisis Micah Projects was provided with additional funding to increase the availability of Street to Home (STH) services. This provided a valuable opportunity to evaluate the service and quantify the ‘hospital avoidance’ benefits of the STH. The evaluation focussed on wound care the treatment of which accounts for a significant proportion of hospital admission and presentations to EDs.

In 2020 the team here at Lotus Support Services (LSS) began our new mission with the opening of new offices in West End, Brisbane. Counsellors dedicated to the Disability Royal Commission were appointed in Lotus Place in Townsville and Rockhampton and a small team began work here in Brisbane. The Disability Royal Commission pressed ahead with their hearings via ZOOM and by the end of the year they had released an excellent Interim Report summing up their findings and identifying the gaps in services and processes that are out-dated and intrinsically disadvantageous to people living with disability.

May 2020 | Covid-19 and beyond

November 2019 | Special Edition – 2019 Annual Report

August 2019 | Micah Projects’ Journey with Mental Health and Disability

June 2019 | Domestic and Family Violence: Not Now, Not Ever

March 2019 | Housing First

January 2019 | Family Homelessness

September 2018 | Health, Poverty and Homelessness

A permanent end to homelessness in Brisbane can and should be a reality, but no single organisation can achieve this in isolation. This 2016 Roadmap provides a practical action plan for government and non-government agencies, businesses and individual citizens to work together, so a permanent end to homelessness is a reality.

An evaluation of the first twelve months of operation of Young Mothers for Young Women Caboolture (YMYWC). The service, which opened in May 2018, is funded by the Queensland Government to provide a community-based integrated health and family support service to pregnant and parenting young women, their children and partners where appropriate.