Homeless Figures

169 Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (15 October 2015). In relation to Budget Paper 4, Volume 1, page 117—

1. Can the minister explain the drastic increase in the number of 'rough sleepers' from 419 in 2013-14 to an estimated result of 760 in 2014-15?

2. What is the reason behind the reporting methodology change?

3. Can the minister please provide a breakdown of 'Street to Home' and state-wide figures?

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers): I have been advised:

1. This indicator reports all rough sleepers assisted by the homelessness sector, recorded in the Homeless2Home (H2H) system, which is used by all funded specialist homelessness service agencies in South Australia.

Prior to 2013-14, data for this indicator only included rough sleepers counted by the Street to Home service in inner city Adelaide.

The increase from 2013-14 to 2014-15 is due to a change in data counting rules and also improvements in data recording.

In 2013-14, records were excluded from this count if 'don't know' was recorded in any of the three housing situation fields used for categorising a client as a rough sleeper. In 2014-15, records that had sufficient detail to indicate rough sleeping, despite the presence of 'don't know' in other fields, were included. As well, there has been a solid effort to improve the quality and volume of data entered into the system by service providers which means that, overall, there are more data available in relation to this indicator.

2. When this indicator was first developed, there was no reliable source of state-wide data relating to assistance provided to rough sleepers. The development of the H2H system now enables this indicator to be reported on a state-wide basis (rather than simply in relation to Street to Home).

The 2014-15 changes to counting rules was undertaken in order to provide a more accurate count of rough sleepers.

3. The actual count for this indicator for 2014-15, which was not available at the time of publication, is 807 rough sleepers in South Australia. The equivalent count for Street to Home was 54.