Homelessness Services

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (16:03): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. Can the Minister for Child Protection explain to the house what measures she has taken to advocate for the Hutt St Centre and Catherine House to retain their funding in the homelessness sector?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Planning and Local Government) (16:03): The member has been apprised already of the circumstances in which the complete restructure as to homeless funding is to apply, and that has been outlined.

As the member herself would have seen in media coverage on these matters, even the Hutt St Centre themselves acknowledge their willingness to work with the alliance to ensure that they are actually able to undertake some subcontracting. Obviously, they have significant other projects and they provide an excellent service. In fact, quite often we do city walks early in the morning and go and have a cup of coffee across from them.

I have seen them develop their $2 million expansion. It's excellent. Members who haven't gone down to see that facility and the work they do should go down to see it. We have a number of residents in our parkland areas who come from interstate or from the north, and there is a large pull on services that are provided by Hutt St, so they do an outstanding job. The case management part of the project in relation to the alliance program that has been introduced under this model will still be provided. The other services of the Hutt St Centre, though, will continue to be provided by themselves.

This is the first time there has been a wholesale review of how we deal with homelessness, ensuring that these agencies, some who provide shelter, some who provide support and transition to other accommodation, some who provide food, counselling and the like—Catherine House, for example, is an excellent program, which I expect will continue to provide and when people are utilising their services they are dynamic.

In fact, I think they were the first service in South Australia to introduce a program of ensuring that a person who was homeless or was in a dire situation in relation to their shelter who wanted to get employment would be able to have assistance with the preparation of a CV for job applications and even be provided with suitable clothing, a suit or whatever, to be able to go to a job interview and support to assist them as to how they might conduct an interview to secure employment. These are all important initiatives. There is no question about that.

The model of how this is to apply and who subcontracts with whom is a matter that I think needs to be employed. What we had before wasn't working adequately. This is a major transformation of the modelling. More money is required to employ that new model and commitment from the government to make sure the transition occurs. That's exactly what we have done, in addition to dealing with the fact that there had been a diminishing pool of properties available under the affordable housing market and enabling them to be accommodated from crisis care into affordable accommodation. Those are matters that are all significant and we suggest under this new program, in addition to the extra money, will actually make this a better outcome for those homeless people.