Youth homelessness prevention charity Kids Under Cover say having a strong family network is helping to prevent many young people from being homeless around the country.
According to figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there are roughly 23,000 grandparent families that are taking care of over 31,000 children in Australia.
CEO of Kids Under Cover, Jo Swift, said: "Grandparents become the primary carers of their grandchildren through varied sets of circumstances."
"Studies have shown that the dominant reason for raising grandchildren was parents' substance abuse (in more than two-thirds of families), followed by child neglect, parents' mental illness and domestic violence," MS Swift said.
"In most cases a combination of factors exist."
The charity recently stepped in to help grandparents Ray and Carol Smith.
The couple were settling into retired life in regional Victoria, when their lives soon changed.
Their daughter-in-law Tegan was 32 when she was diagnosed and later died from an unknown cancer.
She left behind three children - Kayla, Alyssa and Wade.
And shortly after that, their other daughter couldn't care for her two children, Tegan and Daniel.
The grandparents say they couldn't imagine abandoning their grandchildren and decided to take them all in.
"We just don't know where they would have ended up," Mr Smith said.
"We just couldn't do it, when you see all of those poor people that are living on the streets and you just don't know what it's about, it's terribly hard," added Carol Smith.
Mr Smith said it was challenging and they were forced to sell their house and move to Melbourne to care for their younger family members.
"We had to sell the car, a new car, buy a van so we could take them all, then we had to sell the house. We didn't have enough money .. cash in the super," he added.
They struggled until national youth homelessness prevention charity Kids Under Cover came along.
The group supported the family by building a relocatable studio in the grounds of the family home.
That helped keep 19-year-old Kayla in school and close to her family networks and encouraging her to graduate.
"When all three of us girls were in the same room, it was way too crowded. Just one bed alongside of the other," Kayla said.
Kayla said the studio helped to ease living conditions.
"When we didn't have the studio, it was hard to just move. It's good to have your own space, it does help me develop my own things," she said.
