How Annie juggled school and homelessness

“I went through so many refuges until I found a stable refuge that would actually keep me for six months,” she said. “I didn’t really have that parent role to guide me to which steps I’ll be taking.”

There is no national data set that records how many unaccounted-for school-aged children are detached from education. In a 2019 study, Those Who Disappear, University of Melbourne researcher Jim Watterson made a conservative estimate that there may be more than 50,000, based on two state education departments’ internal data.

Homelessness, family violence and transience were listed as among the reasons. Watterson said more study was required.

Youth Projects chair Melanie Raymond said she believed more young people are homeless and trying to finish school than official data shows.

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“It is a hidden and misunderstood problem,” she said. “We see young people who never had a fair chance within a competitive education system. It is not a case of being absent from school for no reason: there’s always a reason, and it’s almost always related to poverty.

“We need to identify who is at risk and fund a host of interventions at all ages.”

Melbourne City Mission head of social innovation Sam Barrett has been working with young homeless people for 25 years and said education was crucial when they were coming out of crisis.

“If you miss that window … and they’re just wandering into doing nothing, things can go sideways,” Barrett said.

Melbourne City Mission runs five youth refuges (there are 22 across Victoria and 13 youth foyers) and Hester Hornbrook Academy – a flexible school aimed at supporting students who can’t attend mainstream education. They have five campuses, about 600 students and a waitlist.

The school offers showers, food and laundry services.

At any given time across those schools, there would be more than 50 students who didn’t have somewhere to go at night, Hester Hornbrook principal Sally Lasslett said. Some would be sleeping rough, others were couch surfing, in a refuge or emergency accommodation.

“It’s safer for them to sleep on a train than to go home. Or it’s safer to walk the streets in Sunshine until school opens the next morning and they could come back into a community that will look after them.”

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She said while there aren’t figures on detached school students, conversations with local government areas made it clear this was an issue and that growing outer metro areas were in need.

“If we were somehow able to act as a collaborative education system to track those young people, imagine what we could do,” she said.

“Education is the key to getting out of poverty. It’s the key to understanding your legal rights. It’s the key to employment. We have young people who go on to get a job, and they’re the first in three generations to have a full-time or part-time job. That’s life-changing.”

A Victorian government spokesperson said they invested $80 million to tackle youth homelessness to deliver more youth entry points and refuges across metro and regional Victoria, which included State Schools Relief for meals, uniforms and glasses and $113 million over two years for TAFE students with wrap-around services.

For international students, finding support can be even more challenging.

Elvis Martin was 17 when he experienced family violence, which led to him sleeping rough for almost three months.

He was studying at Federation University and was unable to access support for crisis accommodation because he was an international student. He finally got support at a youth residential rehab run by CoHealth Community Health, after a six-month involuntary stay in hospital following a major depressive episode.

Now 29, Martin said many university students fell through the gaps, especially international students who had precarious living situations, even though their education was a condition of their visa.

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“They don’t even want to go and talk to a GP about it because they are really worried about immigration coming to know about some of their experience and what impact it will have on their visa,” he said.

Martin said universities needed to implement early intervention, identification and wrap-around support, especially around family violence and mental health.

“Those who say, why don’t they go and get a job – I want to ask: ‘Will you give a job to someone who just came off the street?’” he said.

Clara, 21, who asked to remain anonymous, became homeless at 19. She was attending a private all-girls school during her first experience of sleeping rough, when she was kicked out of home and spent a night on the street.

“I was still maintaining study whilst homeless. I would use public libraries for Wi-Fi and sometimes would have to seek extensions for submission dates,” she said.

Thanks to support from Melbourne City Mission, which provided her with housing and work as a lived experience advisor, she’s studying psychology with honours full-time at Victoria University.

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“The hardest thing you can do is start – once you have done that, who cares how long it takes, you’re already halfway there.”

After starting at Hester Hornbrook in 2021, Leutenmayr agrees. It linked her with the Salvation Army, which helped her with emergency accommodation and then a refuge. Through their support, she completed her Victorian Pathways Certificate; in April, she started a Certificate 3 healthcare course at Victoria University.

“I saw a nurse treat someone who experienced homelessness with compassion and dignity. That moment, it lit a spark in me, and I realised I didn’t want to just survive, I wanted to serve others as well,” Leutenmayr says.

“I may have walked through seasons of instability and hunger, but I never stopped looking towards the future,” she said.

You can support Melbourne City Mission here and donate to youth projects frontline services here.

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