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2023: Housing First for Youth Project Report

After working closely with the State Government and the youth sector to build collective understanding of Housing First for Youth (HF4Y) and emphasise the need to include it in WA’s youth service landscape over the last couple of years, YACWA identified that further work was needed to build understanding of HF4Y in WA and identify what is needed to facilitate the successful piloting and implementation of the approach in WA.

In August 2022, the Uniting Church in the City provided YACWA with a grant to undertake a short project to undertake this work. The key components of the project included:
• Undertaking a literature review to research and collate the core national and international evidence underpinning the HF4Y Model.
• Engaging a small group of key stakeholders with extensive knowledge of Housing First and the youth homelessness system as part of a Steering Group aimed at informing the development of both the workshop and the report.
• Delivering a workshop with around 20 youth workers to gain a sense of the operational needs and barriers of implementing a HF4Y approach in WA and canvassing how HF4Y would fit within the existing Housing First Homelessness Initiative currently in place.
• Developing a final report to collate both information gathered from the literature review and sector workshop to inform a series of recommendations and guidelines for the State Government to implement HF4Y in WA.

This report is a reflection of the learnings and insights gathered through both the national and international literature review and the youth sector workshop. It provides a detailed outline the key components of implementing HF4Y in Western Australia by helping to define the model’s core components, outline the current conditions for Housing First across the service landscape, and provide a snapshot of feedback from youth homelessness services on how the model should be adapted to suit the needs of young people.

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