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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-05-16 Daily Xml
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Homelessness

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:17): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. As the minister cares deeply about our most vulnerable communities, can the minister give us an update about the zero homelessness project in the city of Adelaide?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:17): It gives me great pleasure to respond to this question and I thank the honourable member for her question and for her interest in this important area. I acknowledge, too, that the Hon. Mr Darley in his matter of interest last week talked about the zero homelessness project which is operating in Adelaide at the moment. The current phase that the project is in is phase 2, which is implementation, which is during the month of May, and this week is Connections Week. The project is running largely from the Hutt St Centre on Hutt Street in Adelaide. They have been gathering a range of volunteers, organising them into teams and going out to all parts of the City of Adelaide.

I attended part of the training on Sunday where there were a number of volunteers present. They had a lady who was explaining how to connect with people who were rough sleeping—obviously in a respectful manner. They are very, very organised. They have the cooperation of a range of partners, including the City of Adelaide, and they have mapped the entire City of Adelaide, the Parklands and North Adelaide. They will also be visiting car park locations, which are located on the perimeter on the opposite side of the Parklands.

There are teams of volunteers. They started going out last night, I think, from 4.30. I dropped into the centre again and all of the teams were out and about. They had some mobile teams who are able to visit other locations, should they be required. They are going out this evening again, and again tomorrow morning. They are meeting individual people, listening to their stories and trying to map what each person is needing, and after that they will collate that information together to work on a plan.

It is the beginning of the operational phase of the project. There are close to 200 volunteers, which I may have already mentioned, and they conduct a vulnerability assessment with each person and this information is fed into a spreadsheet called a bi-name list. For those homeless people who provide their names, obviously their information will be put in and will be kept protected, it will assist agencies to monitor the outcomes for all those people who are sleeping rough to enable pathways for them to be developed.

The information is still being collected and a report will be provided on Thursday evening. I would encourage anyone who is interested in this issue to attend. It is at 5.30 at the Scott Theatre at the University of Adelaide. There will be presentations from the Reverend Peter Sandeman, who is one of the project co-chairs, Ian Cox from Hutt St Centre, some of the other partners, including Bendigo Bank, which is providing sponsorship, Kim Holmes from Neami National and myself. People will be able to find out more about what information has been collected as part of Connections Week, and we look forward to further progress on this project, which I hope to report in future.

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