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This paper presents a qualitative study of 22 youth workers' perceptions of their roles and practices in seven school-based settings in a large post-industrial city in regional Australia. Youth workers are often engaged in school-based settings working with vulnerable young people, yet knowledge of how workers perceive and conceptualize their role and practice in these settings remains limited. Through focus group interviews, youth workers were asked how they engage, and work with vulnerable students, how they conceptualize their roles and the bodies of knowledge to which those practices and roles pertain. We find that youth work in school-based settings requires the dynamic and non-linear application of the practices of youth accompaniment, family support and youth-centred advocacy, underpinned by respect for the dignity, autonomy and agency of the young person. We argue that the complex application of these practices positions youth workers as 'bridge-builders' and 'boundary-spanners'. Bridge-builders assist young people to connect and engage with support services. Boundary-spanners build relationships across service providers to network different organizations and professionals for better collaboration and support of young people. These findings have implications for youth policy and practice in the area of youth work with vulnerable young people in school-based settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prevention and early intervention have become part of the Australian policy discourse; however, the prevention and early intervention of youth homelessness remain significantly underdeveloped and underfunded in practice. Consequently, too many young people experience homelessness. This article presents the 'Community of Schools and Services' (COSS) Model as an innovative approach to the prevention of youth homelessness. The COSS Model is an Australian place-based collective impact approach that uses data gathered via population screening in secondary schools to identify and then support adolescents at risk of homelessness and also reorganizes the local support system available to vulnerable young people and their families. This paper is not the result of a research project. Rather, this paper presents the findings of the Embedded Development and Outcomes Measurement (EDOM) report, which is a feature of the COSS Model. This paper is limited to findings from the COSS Model implementation in Albury, NSW, known as the Albury Project, from 2019 to 2023. The Albury Project has demonstrated significant reductions in the risk of homelessness and entry into the local homelessness service system. Findings reveal that: (1) when COSS Model support is delivered to identified at-risk students, 40–50% of individuals are no longer at such high risk of homelessness 12-months later; (2) only 3–5% of students identified as at risk of homelessness and supported through the COSS Model sought assistance from local homelessness services in the following two years; and (3) the flow of adolescents (12–18 years) into the local homelessness services was reduced by 40% from 2019 to 2023. As an evidence-based, complex innovation, there are major policy, funding, and implementation challenges in scaling the model to multiple community sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiences of family conflict are common in young people's accounts of homelessness, yet in‐depth explorations and conceptualisations of these experiences remain sparse. Drawing on focus group discussions with 29 participants, this article explores the accounts of young people and carers and parents about the dynamics, interactions and characteristics of family conflict. Findings highlight the primacy of verbal insults, criticisms or threats, as well as acts of aggression and violence in young people's and parent's understandings of family conflict. Feelings of mistrust, instability and a lack of safety also pervade family conflict and are considered its most impactful elements. We contend that these impacts are best understood via the concept of ontological (in)security, whereby young people's sense of self, belonging and stability are undermined by family conflict. This provides important insights for developing practice in this space, where working to remove long‐term patterns of family conflict, restoring young people's sense of self and belonging within their family, and supporting the stability and trust within a family may prove beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of digital disparities have focused on socio-spatial differences across neighbourhoods, regions and other kinds of places, but the same place can produce different experiences of connectivity, a phenomenon labelled 'variable geometries of connection' by Crang, Crosbie and Graham (2006: 2551) [2006. Crang, M., Crosbie, T., & Graham, S. Variable geometries of connection: Urban digital divides and the uses of information technology. Urban Studies, 43(13), 2551–2570]. In this paper, I draw on research on the role of mobile phones and the internet for people experiencing homelessess in Australia to suggest that dependence on smartphones for access to information and communication when homeless, in combination with the design and regulation of urban spaces, structures the mobilities of homeless young people, resulting in distinctive connectivity needs and barriers. Homeless young people overcome many of their immediate difficulties of digital access through practices of 'survival infrastructuring', a term I propose to describe the practices of marginalised actors to make their media work in the face of uneven, precarious and costly connectivity. Highlighting these connectivity experiences and practices may help efforts to take action on digital exclusion and assist homeless young people by taking into account differential access needs within specific spatial and social contexts. I make this argument drawing on findings from two studies carried out between 2014 and 2016 on the access and use of the internet and mobile phones among homeless Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1980s, one of the authors became an adolescent ward of the State of Victoria, Australia, and went into out-of-home care. While in care, repeated encounters with researchers, journalists and policy-makers left her disillusioned as to the efficacy and relevance of their activities, in that although she was sporadically provided with a ‘voice’, this did little to bridge the divide between their world of privilege and the non-privileged world of the subject of their attentions. The article argues that this divide is perpetuated long after people leave care as adults, and that a mere ‘voice’ is not enough - what is needed is agency, in the design and execution of research. This can be achieved through extended education, depending in turn on an inclusive culture shift within institutions of higher learning. The article utilises the author's personal experience as a brief case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]