Employment and Education

Homelessness turns people’s lives upside down, creating great instability, stress and insecurity for individuals and families. The loss of paid work, inability to secure a job or under employment exposes people to the risk of homelessness. With no home, it is extremely difficult for people to get a job when they so desperately need and want one. Yet secure employment that provides financial stability, sense of purpose and connection to community, enables people to access and maintain housing.

Homelessness also makes it difficult to focus on study. For young people, it is hard to enrol or stay enrolled in a course when you don’t know where you will be living in the long term. For children, the impact of homelessness on their development and connection to school is particularly harmful. Homelessness significantly disrupts children’s participation in education, leading to learning difficulties and disengagement.

Engagement with mainstream education is fundamental to children’s ongoing educational development and overall wellbeing and is critical to prevent ongoing social and economic exclusion.

June 2019

Evaluation Overview: ‘No child misses out’: Education Pathways Program’

Launch Housing’s Education Pathways Program (EPP) is aimed at improving the educational outcomes for children experiencing homelessness and/or family violence. This overview provides a summary of the program’s impacts for primary school-aged children experiencing homelessness.

June 2019

Evaluation Report: ‘No child misses out’: Education Pathways Program’

This report documents an evaluation of the Education Pathways Program, aimed at improving educational outcomes for primary school-aged children experiencing homelessness. The evaluation explored outcomes related to school enrolment and attendance, both central to improving school engagement.

2019

Education First Youth Foyer(EFY) Evaluation

This report describes the outcomes of 162 EFY Foyer participants who exited between September 2013 and July 2017, making them eligible for a twelve-month post-exit survey. They represent 98% of participants who exited after a three-month trial period. Outcomes were estimated using mixed effects regression models to adjust for survey attrition over time. This produces a conservative estimate of EFY Foyer impact.

2014

The Empty Lunchbox: the experience of primary schools with students who are homeless

This exploratory study is the first time that the point of view of primary schools and their day-to-day experiences of dealing with student homelessness have been investigated. The findings make an important contribution to the broader evidence base on the detrimental impact of homelessness on children’s education.

April 2011

Finding Work – Homelessness and Employment

This research is a pilot study that investigates the issues faced by jobseekers experiencing homelessness during their search for work. The findings are based on interviews with 32 jobseekers and 17 service providers from five Job Services Australia organisations, two specialist homelessness services, and two social enterprises.

2009

Education Development Project

Education literature has clearly established the importance of the middle years of schooling as a time where student achievement average can plateau or decline. Critically, the middle years are also consistent with the age when children and young people experiencing homelessness begin to disengage from school.

 

2008

Improving outcomes for homeless jobseekers YP4 final outcome evaluation report

This is the final report from the YP4 trial outcome evaluation series. This report focuses on outcomes for YP4 participants who were offered joined up services and explores whether the amount of case management service received made any difference to participants’ employment and accommodation outcomes.

 

2006

Who is in YP4? Participant profile and circumstances in the twelve months prior to entry

This is the second report in the outcome evaluation series for YP4. It describes circumstances of YP4 participants in the year preceding their entry into the YP4 trial, focussing on housing, employment, education and training, health and wellbeing, use of community services and connectedness to community.

December 2005

Benchmark report: Australian homeless jobseekers aged 18-35

This is the first report from the outcome evaluation of YP4. YP4 was a trial of joined up case management for people experiencing homelessness and unemployment aged 18-35 years. The trial was initiated by Hanover Welfare Services in partnership with Melbourne Citymission, Brotherhood of St Laurence and Loddon Mallee Housing Services in 2005. The report presents a socio-demographic profile of homeless jobseekers aged 18 – 35 years, as a benchmark for the group recruited for the YP4 trial.

 

January 2002

Homelessness & Employment Assistance

This project was initiated to improve current employment assessment procedures for those experiencing homelessness, with particular emphasis on creating stronger linkages between Centrelink, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, Department of Family and Community Services and the broader SAAP system.

 

November 1998

Improving the Job Network for People in Housing Crisis

This project was developed to monitor the impact of changes to employment assistance services and specifically the introduction of the Job Network on job seekers in Melbourne who were experiencing homelessness or were in housing crisis.