Health & Wellbeing

Intersections of Health and Homelessness

It is a common understanding that poor health can contribute to being homeless, and being homeless can lead to poor health. 

Although information and statistics are difficult to obtain, it is widely known that homelessness is associated with a number of physical and mental problems. 

Firstly, health problems themselves can cause a person to become or remain homeless. The leading example is major mental illness. Secondly, living a life of someone who is homeless may cause and exacerbate a wide range of health problems.  Finally, the state of being homeless makes the treatment and management of most illnesses more difficult even if services are available. Examples of this can be found for alcoholism and nearly any chronic illness.

This page is a resource for those working within the homelessness sector (especially in the eastern  region) who are seeking information to support their clients.

Sector News

In Australia there are over 116,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night. Homelessness Week aims to raise awareness of the impact of homelessness on Australia via national and local community events, including providing information on the importance of housing as a solution and educating communities on how they can make a difference.

Homelessness Week 2023 will be taking place from Monday 7 to Sunday 13 August.

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Training

Specialist Homelessness Services (SHS) Training

Council to Homeless Persons (CHP) is the new provider of the SHS Funded Training (taking over from Wodonga TAFE in 2019)

The SHS Learning Program is a central portal for training and educational resources for workers in the Victorian Specialist Homelessness Sector (SHS). The program contains a mix of live training sessions, self-directed eLearning courses and other useful resources.

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Upcoming Events

There are no events scheduled

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workers toolkit

Client Supports and Activities

The Salvation Army Homelessness East and MIND Australia are very pleased to announce the recommencement of Buried In Treasures - a 16 week support group program which seeks to address challenges with clutter, and to learn new ways of thinking about their possessions.

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Research and Reports

In late 2021, The Salvation Army did a nationwide Social Justice Stocktake to get to the heart of what people were seeing in their local communities. From there, they built a map of social justice priorities across Australia.    

 

 

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Practitioner Resources

This guide contains information about discounts and services for eligible households in Victoria. These range from utility discounts, pet registration discounts, dental care concessions and much more. Not all require people to hold a health care card and many services have addtional hardship support for clients with no cards, upon discussion.

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