What ever happened to the revolution ?

Before the 1970’s youth homelessness was a hidden issue that the charities and other state institutions looked after.

Street kids

Street urchins

Street arabs

Neglected children

Juvenile delinquents

Keeping kids off the streets

Child ‘saving’

‘Problem’ families

Apprehension and detention

Resocialising

“Any child found wandering about or frequenting any street thoroughfare tavern or place of public resort or sleeping in the open air and who should not have any home or settled place of abode or any visible means of subsistence”

Neglected and Criminal Children’s Act

St Brigid’s Convent and Orphanage - Ryde

Good Shepherd Girls Home – Ashfield 1963

Clontarf Boys Town – child labour site Perth 1956

“ Please sir …can I have some more ”

YAA 2007

Then something happened !!!!!!

Kedron Lodge 1972

“… where homeless boys and girls, generally between the ages of 13 and 17 were welcomed into a true “home” atmosphere. They were given adequate time to re-establish their lives in the framework of The Lodge, encouraged with educational and vocational programs and then they are supported to move into independent accommodation, which introduced them to caring for themselves – but with Kedron Lodge to come home to at any time.”

The first refuges in NSW appeared in 1975 – 76 as an alternative to the large state or church based institutions

Caretakers Cottage

Young People’s Refuge now auspiced by Detour House

Wanbinga - in Doonside nolonger in operation

Taldemunde

.

YAA 2007

In the mid ‘70s Youth Homelessness became a

‘public’ issue.

YAA 2007

From the minutes of the first

“ … would be a vehicle for lobbying (using simple statistics); info sharing; support and an arena for sharing ideas and new methods being implemented in the refuges”

” (they) decided that things needed changing outside of our services, that just talking about it amongst ourselves wasn’t going to do much and that we needed a base from which to work for change”

“… many of the workers in supported accommodation and housing politics and servicing were from backgrounds of radicalization in broader struggles  - women’s rights, Aboriginal rights, gay and

lesbian rights, and early environmental struggles; and it’s important first to recognize that many of us who worked in the supported accom area also did considerable work in the housing sector …

Paul Van Ryk 1982  first

“ … it was this that led us to making the connections between the personal and the political when it came to looking at root causes of homeless among the young people we dealt with and to knowing that

only operating on a case-work band aid approach was inadequate. We knew that we would get little unless the pillars of sexism, racism and homophobia were continually undermined in our relations with

each other in the workplace, with our funders, and with young people”

Paul Van Ryk 1982  first

Twenty Ten opened in Darlinghurst in 1981.

It was within NSW that the first services for gay/lesbian young people and for transgender people were established.