Thousands of Australian children are homeless, without an adult supporting them

Newly released data provides the first snapshot of unaccompanied child homelessness that Australia has seen, but solving the issue has little to do with housing.

AIHW data shows 42 per cent of unaccompanied children identify interpersonal relationships as the main reason for seeking help. Source: Getty / Connect Images

Key Points

• Of the 78,092 children to access specialist homelessness services in 2023-24, 13,301 of them were unaccompanied.
• Statistics on unaccompanied homeless children in Australia have not previously been isolated and reported.
• Advocates want a national action plan focusing on identifying children at risk of exiting the home.

New figures released on Tuesday show that almost one in five people who sought support from a specialist homelessness service (SHS) in Australia were unaccompanied children.

The data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) showed more than 13,300 (17 per cent) of the clients of such services in the 2023-24 fiscal year were children between 12 and 17 years of age.

The head of an organisation that operates two shelters for children aged 12-15 years in Tasmania told SBS News her staff had seen children as young as 10 coming to ask for help.

Di Underwood, CEO of Tasmanian youth homelessness organisation Home Base, told SBS News the issue of child homelessness needed to be addressed at the root causes and that this was not a shortage of housing.

"When we're talking about a 12-year-old needing a place to stay, the actual bricks and mortar is the last thing that we need to be worried about," she said.

Children experiencing homelessness are often escaping dangerous situations but as an unaccompanied child, they can be at further risk of dangerous situations. Source: Getty / TkKurikawa

Catherine Robinson is a communities and social justice associate professor at the University of Tasmania. She told SBS News she was hopeful the release of this data would prompt action as child homelessness in Australia had been "invisibilised" until now.

The data that has been released had not been broken down this way previously.

"AIHW has traditionally only reported and referred to ‘young people’ as being unaccompanied, and have reported on ‘children's homelessness’ and included that as part of children who might be homeless with their parents," she said.

"So this is a really significant moment in which one of our lead national institutions is finally properly recognising that children are experiencing homelessness without a parent or guardian.

"It's the first time that they've done a standalone report and used that language of 'unaccompanied homeless children,' and that they've isolated the records around that cohort."

Associate professor in communities and social justice at the University of Tasmania, Catherine Robinson, has welcomed the release of this data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Source: Supplied / Richard J Ho, Minch Media

She said this had influenced people's perception of homelessness in Australia.

"They think about young people, and they might assume, well, they might be over 18, they might have access to independent income, they can apply for a rental," she said.

"What's been happening is we've had this situation where all of this discussion of youth homelessness has actually 'invisibilised,' for want of a better word, the specific issue of children's homelessness, and it's let governments and community off the hook."

Factors influencing and the trauma of child homelessness

Underwood said for Home Base staff, "the biggest issue by far that we see is family breakdown and family domestic and sexual violence is the reason young people turn up".

That is also what the AIHW data has shown, with 42 per cent of unaccompanied children identifying interpersonal relationships as the main reason for seeking assistance.

"These young people are homeless because their homes, where their parents are, are not safe places," she said.

Underwood described how experiencing homelessness as a child could cause further trauma.

She said once a child experienced unaccompanied homelessness, they were exposed to other young people and situations "that they probably shouldn’t be".

Home Base chief executive officer Di Underwood says staff within the Tasmanian-based service dealt with unaccompanied children who were experiencing homelessness, as young as 10 years old. Source: Supplied

Robinson said there was a shortage of crisis care available for children to access, and "if our governments don't want to provide safe accommodation for our children, there are other people in the community who do provide that accommodation, and they're not the kind of people that we'd want children to be staying with."

"That could include violent peers and exploitative partners, it's very common for girls, you might have a 14-year-old staying with their 19 or even 24-year-old boyfriend and they're completely dependent on that young man for their accommodation, so lots of girls report absolutely horrific intimate partner violence because they're entirely trapped," she said.

"Then you have criminal networks who might offer kids a place to crash in exchange for helping them move drugs, something I definitely see in my research."

Robinson said there was a "fundamental misunderstanding" of the role government child protection departments play with homeless children.

"It's a highly residualised and specialist service; it is not universally available, you have to meet particular evidenced and legally prosecuted grounds to be removed [from a home] and provided with alternative care in the out-of-home care sector," she said.

"We want to see that that process is extremely rigorous, I'm not suggesting it shouldn't be, but that tells you that there's a particular threshold and definition of which children will be offered out-of-home care, homelessness in itself does not ensure a child meets the threshold for a child protection response," Robinson said.

Statistics only show part of the problem

She said the number of unaccompanied children experiencing homelessness was likely far higher than the 13,301 accounted for in the AIHW statistics, as it only showed the number of children who presented to services.

"If those relevant services don't exist in many states and territories, then clearly you're not getting the number of children in Australia who are experiencing this," Robinson said.

Robinson said only Tasmania and NSW "provide significant shelter accommodation in the specialised homeless service system for homeless children".

Therefore, whilst she said the data provided "a great indicator, it's not a representation of the reality of this issue".

Addressing child homelessness

Robinson said: "what we need is a very distinct conversation about what unaccompanied child homelessness is, and what drives it, as distinct from adult homelessness".

She said while housing stock would be playing a role in overall homelessness, "when we talk about unaccompanied child homelessness, we are talking about very different main drivers of that homelessness, which is really around family conflict, relationship breakdown, abuse, neglect and violence."

"In terms of thinking about what does a good response look like? It's not about housing affordability, it's about family support, addressing family poverty."

Robinson said early intervention mechanisms, particularly in schools and health services were required for the early identification of families and children individually who might be struggling and "on a pathway to having to exit home early because those family relationships are broken down".

Homelessness Australia wants to see a national action plan on child homelessness.

The organisation's chief executive Kate Colvin said systems that identified children at risk need to be established.

"Put in place the protections so they don't become homeless, but also deliver rapid responses to children if they do become homeless, so that they immediately have a safe environment and the support they need to find a pathway into a safe home and with the care that they need," she said.

The government is currently developing a housing and homelessness plan, which had been expected to be released by now.

"It's not clear that they'll identify child homelessness as a separate issue and with a separate response within that overall plan," Colvin said.

"What we're calling for is within that plan that children who are homeless be separately identified and separate systems put in place to respond to them, because the responses are really different."

She said while homelessness in terms of adults was about having physical housing stock and providing the support for individuals to be able to manage a tenancy "when we're talking about children who are homeless, particularly young children, it's about providing a pathway for them into an environment where they're getting the care they need, you can't set a 13 year old up in a tenancy."

Poor outcomes for children experiencing homelessness

Of the unaccompanied children who sought support, just 19 per cent were able to escape homelessness during the period they were accessing such services.

Also part of the AIHW data release were statistics that showed children who received support from an SHS accounted for one in 13 deaths among Australian children from 2012-13 to 2022-23.

Colvin said this highighted the "shocking risks" that children face when they are homeless.

Homelessness Australia chief executive Kate Colvin wants to see a national action plan on child homelessness created to address the issue affecting thousands of Australian children every year. Source: Supplied

"Before they've come to a homeless service, generally, they've had really traumatic experiences, then they come into homelessness, and often have further traumatic experiences of not getting the help they need around violence and exploitation," she said.

"Devastating mental health outcomes are a consequence of that, we can see that in the deaths report where we've lost 520 children in 10 years, that's about one a week, and the leading cause of death is suicide."

Minister for Homelessness and Housing Clare O'Neil has been contacted for comment.