A new program will provide short-term accommodation for homeless Sunshine Coast youth, so that they can regroup, arrange for welfare and longer-term housing and stabilize their lives.
"We're trying to fill a niche for the youth who are in the most desperate straits," said Jim White, homelessness outreach project co-ordinator for Sunshine Coast Community Services Society (SCCSS).
The young people targeted, he said, are 17 to 24 years old and resourceful enough to avoid sleeping in tents or on the sidewalk.
"They are young people on the Coast who are often couch surfing, they've had some family problems, they're transient, they've been involved in soft drugs - pot, usually nothing more," he said. "Kids who basically have grown up in unfortunate situations and find themselves unable to stabilize in any type of long-term accommodation at this time, due to past life experiences."
Up until now, White said, young people in this situation have been able to draw on counselling and support services. At the moment, approximately a dozen young people are using these services. But the Launch Pad program adds a significant new element to help these youth stabilize and plan their way forward - stable, short-term accommodation.
"They will be supported by an outreach worker who will work with the individual to establish goals and objectives, helping them first of all find a secure funding source like welfare, and then help them look for a place that's going to provide long-term, safe accommodation," he said.
For the program to be successful, SCCSS is appealing to the community to volunteer spare bedrooms and basements to house these young people, for stints of either one to three days for "emergency accommodation" or three to 14 days for "short-term accommodation."
Virtually any kind of home will work for the program, White said - assuming it can provide a room and access to a bathroom with a shower.
"It's basically not the home we're looking for - it's the person or the family who's willing to help out," he said.
Launch Pad home providers will receive training and financial compensation. He added that the program will not be available to young people with serious addiction problems.
"We're not going to take a street-entrenched youth who's doing hard drugs and try and get him into a Launch Pad bed," he said. "Not at all. We'd be trying to get him into rehab."
The Launch Pad Program is part of SCCSS's larger homelessness outreach project, which received funding in June. The project includes the development of a strategic plan to address present and future homelessness concerns on the Sunshine Coast.
For more information or to participate in the Launch Pad program, contact White at 604-865-0624 or at [email protected].
