In times of need - Oasis Youth Support Network
NOT JUST A ROOF OVERHEAD
By Lauren Martin
Towards the end of the 80s the issue of young people on Australia’s streets was becoming a concern to policy makers and when Brian Burdekin was commissioned by the Federal Government to head a Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission inquiry into the matter, Crossroads (as the Fitzroy Homeless Youth Program had become known) was at the forefront of its development.
Along with other service providers Crossroads worked with Brian Burdekin on the inquiry and film-maker David Goldie on a documentary about the issue of homeless youth that screened on ABC TV on the evening of 17 May 1989.
In response, Envoy to The Salvation Army, Alan Staines and Sydney advertising executive Trevor Fearnley teamed up to fund and execute the building of a 24-hour centre for homeless young people.
After two years of fundraising and planning, Oasis officially opened in Surry Hills on 4 June 1992. Envoy Alan Staines was the Centre Manager until 1994 (pictured right with Oasis team and Trevor Fearnley.) He was succeeded by John Drew, a lifelong member of The Salvation Army before Captain Paul Moulds (now Major) took on the role in 1996.
At the Cutting Edge
From their beginnings, Salvation Army services to homeless young people have been about more than just providing a bed for street kids.
If it was that simple what we would do as The Salvation Army is we would hire a huge warehouse somewhere and we would put 100 beds in there, a couple of hundred beds, and we would say to kids, come in and stay as long as you like until you get on your feet, until you get a job, until you get your act together and then you can go into the community and live successfully, said Captain Paul Moulds, Director of the Oasis Youth Support Network, it doesn’t work.
So programs were tailored to offer young homeless people a pathway off the streets. An internet radio station and film school at the Oasis Youth Support Network in Sydney is one exciting venture that allows young people on the streets to tap into their creativity and be part of the exciting world of the media.
History repeating itself
Twenty years on from the release of the landmark Burdekin Report and Nobody’s Children documentary, Australians got a sense of déjà vu in 2008. A privately funded report into youth homelessness was launched that coincided with the screening on ABC TV of a documentary entitled the Oasis.
The National Youth Commission Inquiry into Youth Homelessness report, Australia’s Homeless Youth, painted a bleak picture: every night 22,000 teenagers (aged 12-18) are homeless and that figure had doubled in the past 20 years.
The Salvation Army was in the thick of the campaign, with Major David Eldridge Chair of the inquiry and the Oasis Youth Support Network the focus of the Oasis documentary that received critical acclaim and took out two Australian Film Industry awards in 2008 for best direction in a documentary and best editing in a documentary.
Once again the Salvo’s work at the forefront of services to young people on the streets was informing the public and policy makers. In its recommendations the National Youth Commission inquiry urged governments to make a significant financial investment into services to help young people get off the streets and prevent youth homelessness in the first place. At the launch of the report the Federal Housing Minister committed 150 million dollars to go towards building 600 new homes for the homeless.
But it was the public’s not the government’s response to the documentary that has impacted the Army’s services the most. People responded, says Paul of the money that came flooding in. We’re talking to Virgin at the moment about taking on the issue of youth homelessness and I’ve met Richard Branson [head of Virgin] about that. That all happened because someone saw the documentary.
The Future
The response to the Oasis documentary became a tipping point for Paul Moulds. He came to the realisation the future of The Salvation Army’s services to young homeless people was not just about being on the front-line. For a long time I spent most probably 16 hours a day here [at OASIS] and you could do it 24 hours a day just working with kids in such need. But then you don’t have the time to think about advocacy, about speaking to Australia, spending time strategising about how you can make people aware and call people to action to change this.
We’ve seen from the Oasis documentary the power of informing people and of wakening people up and showing them this issue. So we’re committed for the long term to doing more of that.
Today The Salvation Army supports around 120,000 young people each year through more than 180 programs. Contact is made with over 35,000 young people that the Salvos meet on the street or at drop-in centres. And we put a roof over the heads of more than 1,000 young people in our crisis accommodation and transitional housing programs. In the Eastern Territory programs are running in the major cities of Canberra, Sydney and Brisbane and corps based services have sprung up in areas like the New South Wales southern highlands and Queensland’s Townsville.
This article first appeared in The Salvation Army's Hallelujah! magazine.
