Brenton

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Life as a Tenancy Officer, Specialised Programs

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Brenton: "Holbrooks Program started – it’s original name was Housing for Health. It was a COVID response program, so during the outbreak of COVID in 2019 the State Government and all of the associated homelessness programs went around and basically attempted to take all of the rough sleepers off the streets and pop them into either hotel/motels, vacant Housing Authority properties, anything we could find.

So it was certainly a health risk mitigation strategy at the start. A number of those people stuck – a large volume of those people didn’t stick. Maybe we put them in a hotel and they were evicted from the hotel for various reasons, but we certainly identified that there is a large volume of people out there who are quite unwell and were homeless and were at risk to both themselves and in some instances the community.

It was a Cabinet-funded program as a pilot put together as a joint venture between SA Housing Authority, SA Health – and that was the hospital avoidance team within SA Health – and also Uniting Communities. Uniting Communities were on site with us to provide the case management with the clients. We had in the first instance a full-time nurse, a full-time social worker from mental health services, and a full-time social worker from SA Drug and Alcohol Services, and the program was to provide housing stabilisation for a period of three months here at Holbrooks, with regular health input as well.

So:

hopefully by the end of the three months we had a healthier group of people, and
we were also able to demonstrate significant cost savings to government by avoiding these people turning up at Eds.

Typically this is a group of people who don’t have a GP – they’re not very good at waiting in waiting rooms and things like that. They’ll wait until they are in a health crisis, and a health crisis for these people could be they’re ripped off their toenail when they’d had a few too many drinks, they ignore the issue, their tow become sore, they’ll start drinking a little bit more or they’ll start taking more drugs to mask the pain, and then eventually when it hits crisis time their only avenue for support is the Emergency Department, they’ll stager into the Emergency Department in a state of crisis, next thing we have a Code Black, and they cost a lot of money on the health network and obviously is not a good experience for anyone to go through.

It was certainly about addressing those health issues, getting them connected in with a GP so they understood how to look after themselves at the end of the program, rather than that reliance on the Emergency Department, and through the tenancy management support we give them on site they learn how to live in a SAHA tenancy. So they understand by the end of those three months the principals of being a good neighbour are about, how to keep their place clean, pay their rent, and not attract any anti-social behaviour and things like that.

So it’s been a very successful program. About 80% of the participants are still sitting in their long-term tenancy. It’s been really rare that we have seen a tenancy end up in an eviction or anything like that.

Year 2 of Housing for Health became an election commitment with our current government who were successful at winning the election, so they were committed to providing funding. We ran year 2 in a scaled down version – we had a full-time nurse still from the hospital avoidance team – that was certainly seen as the most valuable response to the clients and also in terms of the cost saving to government, and we still have some case management support from Uniting Communities there as well, so their contract was extended for a year with a bit of a reduce funding envelope. The program this year is now running on a business as usual model, so we’ve really had to find some funding from different areas within the agency. SA Health are funding themselves now so we’re down to – the nurse is available to us 2 days a week, and we have the case management on site being provided by the homeless alliance program rather than funding case management as well. So we’re still getting really good success for this critical cohort of people – the homeless rough sleeper group, and we’ve just managed to keep the program going but we’re certainly running at our maximum efficiency now from what we’ve learned over the last couple of years.

Probably midway through the program I actually took an opportunity with the Department for Infrastructure and Transport and left the program very briefly. I was there for about three and a half weeks before I decided I was coming back. My reason for leaving that was I really need to at the end of my working day feel like I’ve achieved something and made a difference in somebody’s life, and I wasn’t doing that over there. Certainly this program gives you that sense of fulfilment – not every day – some days you win, some days you lose – but we certainly have more wins around here than we ever anticipated we would have.

Mark, who you spoke to recently, he’s 100% a success story. He has been through every drug and alcohol program that I’m aware of we operate here in South Australia, and he’s now living his best life having taken our advice and left Adelaide and took up a regional drug and alcohol program with the promise that if he successfully completed that program we’d pop him into a house in that area, and he’s now in employment working in Housing Authority properties."

"The program runs nominations fortnightly and we take nominations from within the Towards Home alliance, and that’s a collaboration between Hutt Street Centre, Baptist Care, Aboriginal Family Support Services, and the Salvation Army. So CBD rough sleepers can certainly access the program through that pathway, and we’re also aligned with the Adelaide North-Western Homeless Alliance and Uniting SA. So through the homeless gateway service they can certainly find out information about the program."

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