A Report Card on Youth Homelessness in Australia

2008–2018

Bibliographic Data

ID11228699
AuthorsTammy Hand (0000-0001-8711-2790, Gonski Institute for Education University of New South Wales Sydney New South Wales Australia, corresponding author), David Mackenzie (0000-0002-5535-9964, Gonski Institute for Education University of New South Wales Sydney New South Wales Australia)
Year2026
Volume61
Issue1
Pages197-209
Publication date2026-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAustralian Journal of Social Issues (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0157-6321 • E-ISSN: 1839-4655
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ajs4.70073
OpenAlexW4415199678
LanguageEN
References cited11

Youth homelessness, recognised early in Australia, has had a high Australian public profile due to a series of official inquiries and the funding of Reconnect in 1997, a world‐first early intervention program for homeless youth. A decade of policy and funding stagnation followed, which spurred the deliberations of an independent National Youth Commission into Youth Homeless (NYC), which shaped the Commonwealth Government's 2008 White Paper. This paper reports on a Report Card review of what was done by Australian governments between 2008 and 2018 assessed against the 10 key policies advocated in the NYC Roadmap document. The overall assessment of the Report Card was a two‐star rating: developing—some progress underway. Youth homelessness might be a wicked social problem, but it is arguably preventable. From this position, and based on the Report Card assessments, the authors set out a policy agenda that, with the right investments, would make it possible for the problem of ‘youth homelessness’ to become an issue that Australia used to have

Commission · Commonwealth · Intervention (counseling · Project commissioning · Publishing · Report card · White paper · Child Welfare and Adoption · Homelessness and Social Issues · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare

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