By Tyler Wright
Local organisation Foothills Community Care, based in Knox and the Yarra Ranges, is calling for community members to increase their awareness of homelessness and advocate for change at a local level as Australia enters annual Homelessness Week.
The theme for Homelessness Week 2022, taking place from Monday 1 August to Sunday 7 August, is ‘To end homelessness, we need a plan’.
In Australia, there were over 116,000 people experiencing homelessness on any given night according to ABS census data released in 2016.
25,000 of those were Victorians, including 360 in Yarra Ranges.
For volunteer organisations such as Foothills Community Care who are part of crisis relief on a grassroots level, it is important to see every one of those 116,000 people as humans and not as a statistic.
“Homelessness is a problem that goes beyond ‘rooflessness’ and a lack of access to safe shelter,” Foothills Community Care CEO Stephen Barrington said.
“The experience of homelessness includes vulnerable people living in refuges, crisis accommodation or in temporary housing, boarding houses, couch surfing, as well as rough sleeping, ie on the streets, in cars, in tents etc,” Mr Barrington said.
Foothills Community Care holds weekly community meal nights at Upwey Community Baptist Church on Monday nights and the Ferntree Gully Guides Hall on Wednesday nights.
Mr Barrington said the community meals may be the only meal attendees have in a week where they can “sit down at a table in a safe nurturing environment with others and have a healthy nutritious meal, while chatting with others as they build positive connections”.
“For some, our weekly community meals are safe havens for people who might be sleeping rough, in tents, in our national parks, in their cars, in local boarding houses,” Mr Barrington said.
“It is not uncommon to have ten or more people who are homeless come along to one of our weekly community meals.”
Foothills Community Care provides fresh fruit and vegetables into some local boarding houses and has delivered over 15,000 food parcels in the past 12 months to those in crisis accommodation.
The organisation links people into other local services such as health, financial counselling/planning, domestic violence support and legal supports where necessary.
“We have been told that we are a homelessness preventer…. in that, many people may be just one pay packet away from facing eviction from their rental or even loss of their mortgage. We have seen this multiplied over the past couple of years, with loss of income and the sharp rise in cost of living,” Mr Barrington said.
With limited capacity in what it can provide, Foothills Community Care Program Coordinator Shannon Kay is calling for the community to get involved.
“Our motto is that ‘everybody is welcome at our table’, and that literally means everyone – so we’d love to see more community members down on a Monday in Upwey or Wednesday in Ferntree Gully, we have the mentality that we are all in it together, rather than an ‘us’ and ‘them’ attitude where a volunteer comes to help, or somebody in need comes to receive, but that we all contribute and we all benefit from showing up and creating a safe space together, sharing a meal and getting to know one another,” Ms Kay said.
“We really encourage people to come along and join us.”
Chuck Page, who coordinates Foothills Community Casseroles meals delivery program, said it’s great to see people from throughout the eastern suburbs coming up to lend a hand washing dishes on meals nights, and we are fortunate enough even to have trained chefs even share their expertise.
“It’s really amazing what these volunteers are capable of. But we’re always open to having more folks walking through the door to help,” Mr Page said.
For more information and to learn about volunteering roles, visit https://www.foothillscare.org.au/.
For more information on Homelessness Week, which will run from Monday 1 August to Sunday 7 August, visit https://homelessnessaustralia.org.au/homelessness-week-1-7-august-2022/
