Research Update 27 November, 2000

The Melbourne component of Project i began recruiting and interviewing homeless young people for the research in the last week of October 2000. It is fantastic to actually start the Project after so many months of planning (the initial staff were employed in January 2000). The team of nine interviewers have been allocated various welfare services throughout metropolitan Melbourne, these are listed on this page. So far we have concentrated on services in the Central, Western, Northern and inner Eastern and inner Southern areas but, as the research progresses, services in the outer Eastern and South Eastern regions of Melbourne will gradually be included. We are excited to have so many agencies involved in the research and look forward to increasing the number participating by early next year.

In order to recruit our sample size of 240 newly homeless young people to interview 8 times over 3 years, as well as one off interviews of 200 experienced homeless young people a year for 3 years, we are enlisting the support of a wide variety of services. The types of services involved in Project i include refuges, outreach teams, health services, employment programs, family reconciliation and adolescent support programs, housing services, education support, drug and alcohol programs, needle exchanges, recreational programs, and general advocacy and support services. As it is important that our sample is truly representational of the homeless population, we have endeavored to recruit as many agencies that work with people who might not access conventional welfare services, such as Koori young people, homeless young women, and young people from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Although we have had a slower start than we had hoped, the research is starting to move along at a faster rate now. About 80% of the interviews so far have been of experienced homeless young people, which is reflective of our assumption that many newly homeless young people do not access welfare services until they become 'experienced' (away from home longer than 3 months). At this stage the Department of Education has not given us permission to recruit young people directly from schools, but we are continuing to negotiate with them because we feel schools are the most important sites for initial contact with newly homeless young people.