Mind Australia is partnering with the Mental Health Legal Centre (MHLC) and Leadership Plus to provide individual and system advocacy to help people with psychosocial disability to find safe and secure housing.
According to Senate Estimates, on 31 March 2024 there were more than 660 NDIS participants in Victorian hospitals. Of those, 263 were deemed medically ready for discharge yet were unable to be discharged due to the insecure or inappropriate housing options available.
In other instances, supported accommodation services such as Supported Residential Services (SRS) and rooming houses have led to a serious exploitation of some people for financial gain, without adequate medical and mental health staffing available on-site. An acute shortage of affordable housing options nationwide only compounds the problem.
Funded by the Victorian Legal Services Board, the new Housing with hope program is designed to address a range of obstacles to appropriate housing for people with psychosocial disability, in addition to the underlying lack of available and suitable housing stock.
This includes improving pathways to enable safe and supported discharges from the health system for people who are medically ready for discharge but are often detained due to the lack of suitable housing options available.
Housing with hope acknowledges that people with psychosocial disability are often trapped between state and federal funded support programs and housing options, or have fallen through the cracks created by the NDIS. Housing with hope aims to address and overcome the current system’s barriers through:
- systemic lived experience-based advocacy to embed policy, systems and safeguards around supported decision-making frameworks for people with a psychosocial disability
- working with individuals to support them to choose their own suitable accommodation and to navigate the complex frameworks with and for them
- educating health and allied professionals about supported decision frameworks and supported housing options (including forfeiting public housing in favour of more appropriate supported accommodation).
The program will fund three new roles: two advocates at Leadership Plus and a systems change advocacy role at Mind.
The advocates will provide advocacy support and guidance to people with psychosocial disability through the program’s collaboration partners. These partners include: Bolton Clarke, Wintringham, St Vincent’s, Inner Melbourne Community Law, Peninsula Community Legal Centre and First Step.
The systems change role at Mind will work to ensure politicians and policy makers heed lessons from this project, improving housing outcomes for people with psychosocial disability longer term.
The Mental Health Legal Centre will spearhead the project, and develop the education resources about supported decision making.
“We want to see people supported in their choice of housing, freed from compulsory mental health detention or long hospital stays for the lack of appropriate housing, and we want people to be free from exploitation by unscrupulous for-profit housing suppliers,” Mind Australia CEO Gill Callister said.
“The purpose of Housing with hope is for people to be seen as people and not commodities. We want people to have homes where they feel safe and empowered, with choice and control at the heart of their experience.”
Housing with hope will commence recruitment shortly. The program will be rolled out through collaboration partners in the near future.