SAAP IV contains four strategic themes which have been committed to by the Commonwealth and all States and Territories:
SAAP IV was evaluated in late 2003 - early 2004. The purpose of the evaluation was to examine the progress and effectiveness of SAAP IV and to advise on the future directions of the program. Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) developed a submission to the National Evaluation Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP IV), and this is WWDA's Submission to that Evaluation.
This Submission was researched and written by Samantha Salvaneschi, for Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) Copyright WWDA 2003.
Acknowledgements and Disclaimer
Why Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) is making this Submission
How this Submission uses certain concepts
Why SAAP is of dire importance to women with disabilities
What Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) knows to be very important about SAAP
How SAAP must comply with international human rights law
How SAAP reporting reforms are urgently required
How reforms outside SAAP will move SAAP upwards and onwards
Why these reforms are warranted and viable
The evidence for this also shows that the housing rights contraventions spawn violations of many other human rights of women with disabilities. The Submission demonstrates how SAAP contributes to both the prevention and infliction of these violations. It then reveals how the Commonwealth must reform SAAP to stop breaking human right law. These reforms include ones that strengthen components of SAAP and replace others.
Where the Submission recommends reforms, it clearly explains why they are practicable, cost-effective ones that are morally and legally required.
The woman carried the bag with the axe and maul and wedges; the man had the billy. 'Squeaker's mate', the men called her, and these agreed that she was the best long-haired mate that ever stepped in petticoats.....
Nine prospective posts and maybe sixteen rails--she calculated this yellow gum would yield.
"Come on." She was waiting with the greased saw.
"It's nigh tucker-time," he said, and when she dissented, he exclaimed, with sudden energy, "There's another bee!..you go on....an' I'll track 'im."
With a shivering groan the tree fell, and as she sprang aside, a thick worm-eaten branch snapped at a joint and silently she went down under it...
Always her dog......patiently waiting for her to be up and about again. That would be soon, she told her complaining mate.
"Yer won't. Yer back's broke," said Squeaker laconically.
".. the doctor says yer won't never work no more, an' I can't be cookin' an' workin' an' doin' everythin'!"
He muttered something about "sellin' out", but she firmly refused to think of such a monstrous proposal.
For a few days he worked a little; not much--he never did. It was she who always lifted the heavy end of the log, and carried the tools...
She wearily watched him idling his time; reminded him that the wire lying near the fence would rust..and when she got up in a day or so, she would help strain and fasten it. At first he pretended he had done it, later said he wasn't goin' t' go wirin' or nothin' else by 'imself if every other man on the place did.
Sometimes he whistled while she spoke, often swore, generally went out, and..dull as he was, he found the "Go and bite yerself like a snake", would instantly silence her..
There were months to run before all the Government conditions of residence, etc., in connection with the selection, would be fulfilled..she thought.. he was trying to sell out, and she would not go.....
This Submission is dedicated to the author of Squeaker's Mate, the late Barbara Baynton. It is also dedicated to all those women with disabilities, who like the eponymous Squeaker's Mate, strive for a home with secure tenure, where they can pursue their chosen good life, free from assault, ridicule and other abuses.
CEDAW - Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women
CESCR - United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
CROC - Convention on the Rights of the Child
HRC - United Nations Human Rights Committee
ICCPR - International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
ICERD - International Covenant on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination
ICESCR - International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
SAAP - Supported Accommodation Assistance Program
UDHR - Universal Declaration of Human Rights
UN - The United Nations
WWDA - Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) Inc.
In response to Term 1, Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) has analysed the extent to which the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program IV is meeting its commitment to protect the human rights of women with disabilities and others who are, or are at risk of becoming, homeless. This analysis juxtaposes the lives of these people with the SAAP aims espoused by the Commonwealth in the Supported Accommodation Assistance Act 1994 (Cth).
The juxtaposition is a disturbingly jarring one. The Submission evidences that many women with disabilities and others are forced to fight against multiple and compounding violations of their human rights. Most pertinently, it demonstrates that they frequently experience these violations because of the Commonwealth's breach of their human right to adequate housing, and vice versa. Accordingly, in answer to Term 7 WWDA suggests that SAAP data reports address more the position of women with disabilities and the compliance of SAAP funding, policy and service-delivery with domestic and international human rights law.
In the same vein, WWDA responds to Term 9 by proposing practicable measures that Commonwealth-State/Territory governments could jointly administer to protect the rights of women with disabilities and others who are, or are likely to become, homeless.
In summary, WWDA recommends that the National Evaluation concentrate on how Commonwealth-State/Territory arrangements can and should comprehensively redress:
Further, one of WWDA's policy priorities for 2003 to 2008 is housing. This is because housing is one of the policy matters that WWDA members most frequently raise in various WWDA forums. These include the email discussion group; the Management Committee meetings; the perennial flow of telephone calls and letters to the WWDA Office; and WWDA-hosted workshops and consultations on violence, telecommunication services and other matters.
Through these avenues, members and others can see that the lack of systematic homelessness prevention is a fundamental driver and outcome of some of Australia's 'public policy problems'. In so saying, they report that crisis and emergency accommodation is a critical part of these measures.
Many of the members and their supporters are unaware that the Supported Accommodation Program (SAAP) administers these accommodation services. However, WWDA Executive hears complaints about services that the Executive knows are SAAP ones. This is not only because of the markedly devolved and decentralised nature of WWDA forums. It is mostly because women with disabilities are disproportionately at risk of homelessness to a very high degree.
This is compellingly borne out by official SAAP reports, as well as those of Government and non-government researchers. For instance, the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Homelessness notes that:
People with disabilities are highly vulnerable to homelessness and are more likely to experience poverty, abuse and social isolation than the broader community. Programs established to support people with disabilities are often limited in the range of services they provide and do not necessarily address the needs of those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Homelessness services are often not able to provide the level of support needed by people with disabilities due to inadequate funding and training.
People with disabilities who are eligible for public housing often face longer than usual waits for suitable properties to become available.
Women, and people with disabilities are more likely to experience homelessness not only because they have lower incomes, but also because they experience more discrimination in the housing market (2001).
Within this paper, 'accessibility' refers to the degree of openness of housing or care services, programs and facilities, to the entry of people in equitable ways that preserve their independence and dignity (Dunn, 1996).
The human right to adequate housing is specified in many international legal human rights instruments, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and several human rights treaties ratified by Australia, including the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights Of the Child (CROC) and the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (CRSR).
However, the treaty that most centrally provides for the right to adequate housing is the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Article 11(1) of this Covenant recognises the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself (sic) and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions.The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has defined this right in two documents. These are the General Comment 4: Adequate Housing and General Comment 7: Forced Evictions.
General Comments 4 and 7 constitute the most authoritative interpretations of Article 11(1). In them the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) prescribes that the right to adequate housing is to be interpreted broadly and applied to every human person, irrespective of their gender, family or other status to mean the right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity.
The Comments also mandate that certain indicia are to be taken into account, in an assessment of whether housing is 'adequate'. These are:
The SAAP Act Preamble provides that:
The Act notes that:
The Parliament intends to ensure that people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness are given opportunities to redress their circumstances and that their universal human rights are not prejudiced by the manner in which services are provided to them.
The Act stipulates that Commonwealth-State/Territory Agreements should be the basis for operationalising these rights by:
establishing the means by which the civil, political, economic and social rights of people who are homeless may be preserved and protected by service providers (SAAP Act, 1994, Article 8b).
These aspirations are reflected in Section 5 of the Act, which declares that SAAP must, inter alia:
Section 7 of the Act recognises the relationship between reaching these goals and enabling people experiencing homelessness to access:
In a 1992 survey, SAAP service providers reported that thirteen per cent of their clients had a history of psychiatric illness and eleven per cent had either a physical or intellectual disability (SAAP, 1999). The proportion of single women in SAAP services on disability income support is twenty-five per cent. The predominant types of disability among SAAP service users are psychiatric disability, developmental disability and acquired brain injury. Nearly all people accommodated by SAAP services in inner city areas have a significant level of disability (Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Homelessness, 2001).
In April 1995, National Shelter published The Cost of Housing Report. This Report addresses the connections between poverty and the ratio spent on housing costs to gross income. The Report shows that, on average, single women pay more than any other group - 35.8 percent of their gross income - on private rent. As private home-buyers, they pay 37.7 percent of their gross income, again the highest level, and single women pay the highest percentage of that gross income as public housing rent. This is hardly surprising, given the corpus of research showing that women, and single women parents, are the ones most affected by poverty, that they are less likely to own homes, and spend more of their gross income on housing-related costs, such as rent, mortgage repayments, and maintenance.
The Cost of Housing Report provides no statistics specifically on women with disabilities. However, it is well documented that women with disabilities pay for the costs that their disabilities incur only because decision-makers have not factored in that humans have disabilities. Watson, in her report "...we do without..." (1995) details a range of these costs. They include modifications to make houses accessible, health care and attendant care bills and the purchase of other accommodation support services. Without these modifications and services, many people would suffer a grave deterioration in their quality of life and level of independence.
As Gething (1999) underlines, disability-related costs account for a large proportion of income that could otherwise be saved or invested to attain security of tenure. The lack of alternative accommodation for women with disabilities makes security of tenure crucial to them. Issues such as physical accessibility of housing and the neighbourhood, discrimination by landlords, lack of accessible housing and proximity to disability services make it very difficult for women with disabilities to move house, even if their current housing is inadequate.
Suitable location is particularly important for women with disabilities. The lack of accessible transport means that they may need to live very close to work, shops and schools. They may also need to live close to disability or health services. Outer suburbs are simply not feasible for many women with disabilities (Cusack, 1992; Wilson and Scott, 1995).
Cooper (1993) eloquently explains why policy and program administrators must truly factor these additional costs into their decisions. She notes:
If people have the same level of income, but its real value is reduced by costs which they require to do the ordinary activities which human beings do, then the group with the extra costs is disadvantaged.
Also some women live with more severe disabilities than others. Such severity reduces choice among limited accommodation options and increased likelihood of premature entry into cared accommodation (Brooks, Davidson, Kendig and Reynolds, 1998). Lack of accommodation and care choices are compounded by unemployment, because most in this group rely on income support. This reliance precludes them from purchasing housing in the private sector.
The limited resources available because of community services funding caps, limit the provision of service and flexibility of service options regardless of high levels of unmet demand (Kalisch, 2000). This means carers have to pick up the tab, including carers who have disabilities. Women are nearly three times more likely than men to be primary carers in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1998). The immediate and longer-term costs of caring are usually the emotional and physical decline of carers and financial costs of lost income and opportunities for advancement and promotion (Watson and Mears, 1996).
Many of the 'high and the low' in Australia have supported decisions that were evidently bound to severely disenfranchise certain groups of citizens. These groups include women with disabilities and others who were already gravely disadvantaged by decades of decision-makers ignoring their rights. After supporting regressive measures, many Australians have washed their hands of remedying the harms of these measures on their fellows (see, generally, ACOSS website www.acoss.org.au).
There can be no improving SAAP, unless the press and the three arms of government refuse the lie that homelessness is caused, or at least, exacerbated by lack of state provisions for the poor. There is a raft of evidence indicating that unless there are such basic provisions, societies cannot attain stability, good governance and economic growth (see, generally, ACOSS website www.acoss.org.au). This evidence is well accepted by conservative, reformist and radical economists, sociologists, health planners and others.
According to the latest SAAP statistics, almost half of the SAAP 'support periods' for elders were for elders who were in receipt of Disability Support Pension at the commencement of their period(s) of support (Wright-Howie 2002).
About eleven percent of older SAAP clients stated that they required assistance, because they had recently arrived in the area, whereas eight percent of younger people provided this reason. Older male clients appear to have lived the most transiently of all SAAP clients. Both women and men elders tended to nominate financial difficulties as the major reason they seek SAAP assistance. Further, psychiatric illness seems to have been more prevalent among both men and women elders, than among younger SAAP clients.
However, while forty percent of the women elders stated domestic violence was the main reason they sought out SAAP assistance, none of the men elders offered this reason. Instead, they said they required help because of their financial and/or substance abuse problems.
Older homeless people are less likely to access traditional homelessness programs such as SAAP and more likely to approach services offering mainstream programs such as Home and Community Care (HACC).
Formally speaking, HACC services do not exclude elders who are homeless. However, there is some evidence that some organisations find elders who are homeless unfitting for HACC services. This evidence suggests that HACC services are ill-prepared to meet the needs of elders who are homeless because:
Now more than ever, Australian elders live alone and, therefore, without the assistance that they might receive from a spouse or adult child. As compared to men, significant numbers of women aged sixty-five years and older live by themselves. This is because they live longer than men and tend to marry older men. In the over-eighty age group, fifty-four percent of men lived with (a) family member(s), while only sixteen percent of women did. Further, fifty-five percent of women, as compared to twenty-percent of men, were residing alone (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 1997).
People aged sixty-five years and older makeup twelve percent of the population in Australia. In Australia by the year 2051, over a quarter of the total population will be aged 65 years or older (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1996). The baby boomers, born around the late 1940s, are now entering their 50s. Within ten years, this large group of people will be approaching old age. Medical advances are allowing a growing proportion of older people to survive to the oldest-old category (eighty years of age and more) (McCafferty, 1994).
Ageing and disability are positively, linearly correlated. For example, disability rises from four percent of children 0-4 years to eighty-four percent of those aged eighty-five and over (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1998). Further, advances in technology, medical care and community support mean that more people with longstanding disabilities who once would have died before reaching late adulthood, now have a life expectancy that approximates that of the general population (Gething, 1999; Office of Disability, 1999).
This means that persons who became disabled early in life are ageing and ageing faster. For instance, chronic health problems typically associated with older age tend to surface earlier and have worse consequences (Burns, Batavia, Smith and DeJong, 1990; Kahler, 1998). Additionally, this group has a much greater chance of re-hospitalisation than the general population, with some US studies reporting re-hospitalisation rates as great as forty percent within the first year of discharge (Burns et al., 1990).
Many people in younger generations have been part of the deinstitutionalisation process and already have high support needs. Consequently, it can be expected that many would resist reinstitutionalisation solely on the basis of advanced age (Kahler, 1998; Morgan, 1996).
Consequently, it is imperative that the Supported Accommodation and Assistance Program strives to induce policy-makers, program administrators and front-line staff to:
However, Keys and Young (1998) found that many women with disabilities were deterred from accessing refuges, because they believed that some refuges' practices were discriminatory, especially towards women with psychiatric disabilities and young women.
WWDA believes that there are many serious concerns about SAAP services for young women:
However, in 2003, the year after the fifth anniversary of the Sea of Hands, unemployment for indigenous Australians is four times higher than for other Australians. The Australian Bureau of Statistics publication, Experimental Statistics: Labour force characteristics of Indigenous Australians (ABS Cat.6287) indicates that the rate was a staggering twenty-three percent in February 2003. Further, infant mortality rates are three times higher than that for non-Indigenous Australians and life expectancy nearly twenty years lower.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, in its Report, Bringing Them Home (1997), recommended that the Federal Government apologise to the Stolen Generations. This recommendation received deep and wide approbation from Aboriginal people and their supporters. No apology has been forthcoming from the national government, despite repeated calls for one from the National Reconciliation Council, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, church leaders and other.
The Prime Minister has insisted on 'practical reconciliation' alone, even though many communities have held 'sorry' ceremonies, reconciliation marches, and memorials for those who were harmed by the forced removal of children.
Given this, it is hardly surprising that the Prime Minister's 'practical reconciliation' has not translated into significant investments in adequate housing and housing support for Aboriginal people. This is so, notwithstanding that adequate housing is one of the highest predictors of health and well-being and Aboriginal people, on average, experience the lowest levels of health and well-being and housing, against any official benchmark.
In comparison to non-Indigenous clients of SAAP, Indigenous clients are more likely to be female, in particular women escaping domestic violence; more likely to be users of crisis/short-term accommodation services; and more likely to use SAAP services for a shorter period of time.
Research conducted in Western Australia found that Indigenous women were more likely to use refuges as respite from violence rather than transition (Blagg et al. 1999). Research conducted in Northern Territory also points out a number of cultural differences in use of and response to refuges or shelters by Indigenous women (McPeake 1999). Indigenous women expressed concern that the services would be 'feminist', 'man-hating' or 'run by lesbians' and the lack of culturally appropriate staff (Keys Young 1998).
As the Commonwealth Advisory Committee on Homelessness stresses (2001), there must be comprehensive improvements to the appropriateness and volume of SAAP and related services for Indigenous people.
Researchers have conducted little investigation of the uptake of housing and care services by disabled people from non-English speaking backgrounds. However, there is strong anecdotal evidence to suggest that these people are under- represented in the populations using these services (Chan and Quine, 1997; Cranny and Associates, 1998; Plunket and Quine, 1996).
Research by Keys and Young (1998) identified a range of reasons why women did not access refuges. These included the failure of some refuges to be culturally inclusive in terms of staffing, the advertising/marketing of their service, their service-delivery approach and the development of skills in dealing with issues relating to special needs of particular women (Keys Young 1998, pp. 78-80). This research also showed that many women from non-English speaking backgrounds were concerned that refuges are 'feminist', 'man-hating' or 'run by lesbians' (Keys Young 1998).
The Keys Young (1998, p. 78) found that a range of service-providers nominated women with a disability and women from non-English speaking backgrounds, as groups they thought were less likely to use existing domestic violence crisis and related services. Again, unpaid carers do what 'formal' services do not do, particularly women carers (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1998).
WWDA is concerned that the SAAP national administrators seem to have not seriously attempted to remedy this deficit of SAAP information to CALD women. A multi-lingual communications campaign that is well-researched and broadcast through a range of media is long overdue. The National Domestic Violence Forum recommended such a campaign in 1996.
To date there has been little research conducted on homelessness among young people with minority sexualities and genders. One was carried out in Sydney, namely, As Long As I've Got My Doona (Irwin, Winter, Gregoric, Watts, 1995) and another in the United Kingdom called 'Hidden in Plain Sight': Homelessness Amongst Lesbian and Gay Youth (O'Conner and Molloy, 2001).
Both revealed the experiences of homelessness among young people who identified as lesbian, gay and bisexual. A critical, epistemological flaw in these studies was that they departed from the premise that young people identify only as heterosexual or gay or lesbian or bisexual. Yet a swathe of research in the liberal arts and public health as well as autobiographical pieces suggest that people - including young people - experience their sexuality and gender in modes that transcend these narrow, orthodox categories of identity.
To begin with, many people who have sexual relations with people who share their gender do not regard themselves in their own minds, let alone to the world, as a 'gay' or homosexual' or 'lesbian' or 'dyke'. Further, many do but only within themselves and, often, with much ambivalence, if not self-loathing (Savine-Williams cited in Davies 1996).
Our society is generally presented in heterosexual terms, however it is estimated that one in ten people identify with diverse sexuality and gender expression (Farnan, 2001). Sexuality can be understood as three related continuums; namely, sexual orientation, sexual behaviour and sexual identity where human sexuality is recognised as fluid, diverse and complex (Mackenzie, 2003, Farnan, 2001, Savine-Williams cited in Davies 1996, Remafedi, Farrow and Deisher, 1991).
The Standing Committee on Community Affairs in 1995 made five recommendations to the National SAAP Coordination and Development Committee on services for young people with minority sexualities and/or genders.
The first recommendation was that research funds must be made available to gather data on homeless young people with diverse sexuality and gender expression (Australian Parliament House of Representative Standing Committee on Community Affairs, 1995).
The second was that at least one specialist SAAP service be established in each major capital city for young people who identify as same-sex attracted. Third, that all SAAP services provide training to staff on issues relating to the sexuality of young people. Fourth, that SAAP service address those issues associated with the safety of young people who identify as members of a minority sexuality or gender (Australian Parliament House of Representative Standing Committee on Community Affairs, 1995).
The final recommendation was that SAAP staff be trained in adolescent mediation and family therapy services and young people's sexuality (Australian Parliament House of Representatives Standing Committee on Community Affairs, 1995).
WWDA notes that the second recommendation is not being implemented. WWDA also noted that it is extremely difficult to find any evidence of whether or not the other recommendations are being implemented, apart from the SAAP-funded study, Closets of (Y)SAAP (Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services, 2003).
That it is not evident to WWDA - after scouring SAAP State, Territory and National Reports and Evaluations - that anything, apart from one study, is redressing the inaccessibility of SAAP services to people of minority sexualities and genders is extremely concerning. This is especially because research bears out that young people had experienced both perceived and actual queerphobia from clients and staff while accessing SAAP agencies and accommodation and related services. Further, it showed that this queerphobia often deterred them from accessing the services they needed. Consequently, they slept on the streets, in squats, abandoned buildings, stairwells and doorways (Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services, 2003). This research also concluded that SAAP workers are often unequipped to address homophobia from other residents and unaware of sexual health issues (2003).
State and Federal Governments must develop service delivery models and implement other strategies to reduce heterosexist and queerphobic service delivery. SAAP workers must be trained to recognise queerphobia and its effects and demonstrate sensitivity to homeless people with minority sexualities and genders (Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services, 2003).
WWDA commends to the evaluators the analysis and recommendations of Astrid Reynolds and Susan Inglis (Ecumenical Housing Inc.) (2001): Effective Programme Linkages - An examination of current knowledge with a particular emphasis on people with mental illness Work-in-Progress Report, prepared and published by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Swinburne-Monash Research Centre, Melbourne.
Further, this group is hardly ever included in decision-making about state programs, including SAAP. There are many overseas examples of this that national, state and territory SAAP policy-makers and service deliverers can fruitfully use to inform their attempts (see, for example, Allen and Granger, 1997; Deegan, 1992; Curtis, Montague, McCabe, Caron, Harp, 1991; Chamberlain, 1990; Campbell and Schraiber, 1989).
Further, this group is hardly ever included in decision-making about state programs, including SAAP. There are many overseas examples of this that national, state and territory SAAP policy-makers and service deliverers can fruitfully use to inform their attempts (see, for example, Mount, 1990). WWDA can find very little evidence that SAAP has properly attended to housing choices for this group.
SAAP agencies and accommodation are physically inaccessible to some women with physical and sensory disabilities. The gravity of this deficit becomes clear, when it is considered that accessible housing is simply not available on the private market to the degree required. It is beyond the means of most women with disabilities to make these modifications, should a private landlord allow such alterations. Further, a lack of security of tenure means that they may have to make modifications every time they are forced to move (AHURI, 2002; WWDA, 2002).
Sudden and sustained mass unemployment has resulted from the closures and privatisations of processing and manufacturing plants and port and other ancillary services in the industrial suburbs of urban cities and in industry-dominated regional ones (see Argy, 2003).
In rural and regional farming areas, Australians' quality of life has also seriously deteriorated. A great toll has been exacted by decades of down-turns in agricultural commodity markets; increases in micro-economic and free trade reforms; under-investment in rural and regional public infrastructure; and, until relatively recently, poor land and water management (Argy, 2003).
Apart from the illness deriving from financial stresses, there have also been so-called 'clusters' of people contracting cancer and other auto-immune diseases. These clusters have principally been around heavy metal mines, benzene-emitting smoke stacks and fields sprayed with pesticides. This is in areas with a lack of health care and other support services (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 1998). This and other suffering has been shouldered by the carers in these deprived communities. These carers are overwhelmingly women (Australian Bureau of Statistics).
Refuges are still very inaccessible to rural women, due to the distances that they must travel to reach refuges and, often, with inadequate transport infrastructure (WESNET 2000).
Another review in 1993 highlighted the need for SAAP to have an even broader vision than provision of shelter and support and identified the need for the program to respond to the factors causing homelessness rather than continuing to react to the crisis (Casey et al. 1996, p. 275). It was recognised that women and children escaping domestic and family violence have a wide range of needs and require access to:
This is very alarming, when it is remembered that approximately fifty percent of women with disabilities will be sexually assaulted during their lifetime (Sobsey 1988) fifty percent of women with disabilities have been sexually abused as children; and thirty-nine to sixty-eight percent of girls with developmental disabilities will be so assaulted before their eighteenth birthday (Roeher Institute, 1988).
A communications campaign on what SAAP services do and how, when, where and why should be developed specifically to reach women with disabilities, women in rural and remote areas and CALD women. The National Domestic Violence Forum recommended this in 1996.
Researchers who have examined the types of assistance sought by women have generally used the categories 'informal' or 'formal' assistance. Informal includes friends, relatives and women's self-help groups and formal includes social service organisations, doctors, hospitals, police, religious organisations and shelters.
Most of this research indicates that about half of any given sample of women experiencing domestic violence have turned to their family and friends for assistance. Women who have reported receiving help from relatives or friends have rated it as very important to being able to leave their partners (Sullivan et al. 1994, p. 3).
Hill and Stamey (1990, p. 311) argue that moving from 'housed' to 'homeless' is a process whereby people move from a self-sufficient home/house, to living with friends, relatives, or in government, temporary housing, to the streets.
WWDA regards it as wise for any communication campaign to be targeted at influencing not only women enduring domestic violence, but these others to whom they turn.
The Australian Commonwealth Government has not directly incorporated this right to adequate housing into Australian law. Instead, it provides various programs, on which it relies for the protection of aspects of the right. SAAP is one of these Programs.
However, SAAP cannot be so relied upon. It fails to implement the right in three fundamental ways.
First, it fails to provide all homeless people with a right of access to services or other assistance. The Commonwealth Parliament could provide a legal basis for this right of access by enacting legislation similar to Scotland's Homelessness Act 2002. The Homelessness Act lays down a legal right of access to permanent, adequate housing for certain homeless people. It also declares that, in ten years time, this right will belong to all homeless people, not just the prescribed types of homeless people who it presently covers.
Second, the SAAP Program provides insufficient guarantees that its accommodation will fulfill the adequacy requirements of emergency and supported housing, under international law. One fundamental instance of this is that none of the SAAP service standards provide guarantees of accommodation that meet the standards of the legal right of access to housing.
The rights specified in the service standards are insufficient to adequately protect those human rights of which homeless people are often deprived. In many SAAP services, the clients' rights are made conditional upon client responsibilities, which are often more numerous and weighty than the rights. Where responsibilities are not fulfilled, or there are breaches, rights are withdrawn. The effect of this is that those rights that appear to be guaranteed in the service standards are not protected.
For example, people are often evicted from SAAP services and then denied referral to another service. Thus, rather than protecting the rights of homeless people, the SAAP service standards can be used to further violate them. The CESCR has identified forced evictions as a violation of the human right to adequate housing. CESCR notes that:
evictions should not result in rendering individuals homeless or vulnerable to the violation of other human rights. Where those affected are unable to provide for themselves, the State party must take all appropriate measures, to the maximum of its available resources, to ensure that adequate alternative housing, resettlement or access to productive land, as the case may be, is available.
The SAAP accountability mechanisms to enforce the right of adequate housing are also woeful. Apart from in New South Wales, service standards are enforced only by internal grievance procedures. Further, with no right to appeal to an independent administrative or judicial body and no external monitoring of the internal procedures or compliance with service standards. This enforcement falls very short of an effective remedy for housing rights violations, as stipulated by the ICESCR. Such lax enforcement of the right is also contrary to the human rights protection terms of the SAAP Act.
Third, the total SAAP budget is too small to implement the right to adequate housing to the extent mandated by Article 2(1) of the ICESCR. This Article requires each state party, Australia included, to implement the right to adequate housing by taking steps:
to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognised in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures.
The Commonwealth funding allocations to SAAP preclude SAAP services from properly meeting the needs of the homeless people it serves.
For example, there is scant mention of housing and housing support services, in the Women's Budget Statement 2003-04, announced on 13 May 2003, by Senator the Honourable Amanda Vanstone, the then Minister for Family and Community Services and the then Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Status of Women. More specifically, there are two passing mentions of housing. The first is with respect to the Other Women's Programmes funding program, which, the Budget Statement states covers:
a range of research activities including: Analysis of housing services and housing support services that are required to facilitate successful transitions, or exit pathways, out of homelessness for women.
The second reference to housing matters is under the heading Rural Women's Outreach Project. It reads:
The Government also funds community legal services around Australia to provide legal services to women in rural and remote areas and to those who are isolated due to factors such as disability, age or domestic violence. These specialist legal services most often deal with issues of domestic violence and family law; child support; child abuse; discrimination and harassment; financial matters; housing and tenancy; property; consumer credit; and relationships.
It is only fair to characterise these housing notes as incidental ones. That they are the only points on housing in the entire Statement of Federal Budget items dedicated to women is most concerning. It is so because of the raft of up-to-date research - much of which the Commonwealth government commissioned - pointing to the magnitude and destructiveness of women missing out on adequate housing.
Considering the unrealistically low SAAP budget and that Australia is a long-standing 'developed' country, it is doubtful that Australia is fulfilling its ICESCR obligation to implement the right to housing maximally within its available resources.
WWDA urges the Evaluators to consider how the National Data Collection might be deployed to collect and report data that assists in early identification of needs for appropriate referral to specialist and generalist services and enhanced involvement of generic and specialist services; and reduced duplication of assessments of people presenting at different SAAP agencies and support services.
In this regard, WWDA hopes that the National SAAP Client Outcomes Project develops robust qualitative as well as quantitative outcome measures, including reductions in client needs during her period of support.
WWDA sees great value in the development of uniform SAAP assessment approaches common to all the States and Territories and common data categories and associated assessment tools across programs, especially mental health, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, disability rehabilitation and support, education, employment, vocational training, income support and housing services.
WWDA regards this as fundamental to the proper development of so-called 'specialist, integrated responses' to people whose needs span a range of program and/or departmental areas. Such responses include the Complex Clients Project in Victoria; the Management Assessment Panels in South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory; and the Exceptional Clients Project in South Australia.
Each National and State/Territory SAAP evaluation, review and performance report should account for the levels of compliance of SAAP services with State and Territory and Commonwealth anti-discrimination laws and the international human right to adequate housing.
Each of these evaluations and reports should also note the extent to which the SAAP providers have systematically and comprehensively identified and corrected any actual or potential breaches of these laws. These notes should cover whether providers have developed and lodged Action Plans under applicable anti-discrimination laws, where these laws provide for such Plans. For instance, under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission advises on and registers Action Plans that accord with the terms of the Act.
The SAAP Act requires a National Research Program for the purposes of informing SAAP policy, management and outcomes evaluation. The aim of this Program is to provide high quality information about homelessness, homeless people and SAAP (SAAP Data and Research Advisory Committee, 2000). This Program has recently come to offer research grants for projects that integrally involve SAAP agencies. WWDA commends the outcomes of these projects. Some of them have focused on the needs of women, although seldom the needs of women with disabilities.
WWDA considers it urgent that SAAP research grants are made available very soon to well-planned projects on the strengths and weaknesses of SAAP services vis-à-vis women with disabilities. As stated by the authors of the Working Towards a National Homelessness Strategy (2001):
We need to know more about:
This research would be far more cost-effective and useful, if it studied how women and children experience the above factors, as compared to men. This is so, because, as is widely acknowledged, societies treat women and children differently from men, including women and children with disabilities. Accordingly, different policy responses are often warranted for each group.
Further, WWDA joins other organisations (see www.afho.org.au and www.acoss.org.au)in their calls for all Australian governments to urgently work with community organisations to develop and implement a robust and sustainable National Housing Strategy.
This Strategy must offer a suite of measures to eradicate homelessness that SAAP neither can, nor should, provide alone. WWDA, hence, makes the following Recommendations:
WWDA also believes that these measures can be realistically and sensibly provided for in the next Commonwealth Budget. The Government's 2003-04 Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook statement predicts 'healthy' economic growth and underlying cash surpluses.
Further, there would be more money in the Federal coffers, if the Government progresses its tax reforms, by setting in train measures to curb tax avoidance and unjust tax concessions. Accordingly, WWDA Recommends that the Government resolves to:
It might be remarked that many of the Recommendations in this Submission are not about preventing homelessness or bolstering SAAP, but about poverty reduction.
It would be correct to say so. Several of the Recommendations regard social security and taxation reforms; regulation of developers of residential estates; and direct public spending.
This is because these poverty reduction priorities are at the heart of making SAAP a viable Program and homelessness a museum piece.
After all, the demand for SAAP services cannot be decreased, unless there is a demolition of the structural causes of homelessness. It is well-established from researches in Australia and overseas that these causes are violence, substance abuse, psychiatric illness, lack of affordable and suitable housing, unemployment, underemployment, inadequate wages and income support and a lack of access to essential services and supports.
It is hoped that this programme of reform is one that is regarded as axiomatic by the National Evaluators of SAAP IV. If it is not, Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) asks the Evaluators to meditate on how international human rights law has long required Australia and other developed nation-states to rigorously implement such a programme.
Not only is it legally impermissible for the Commonwealth Government to be indifferent to the inadequate housing and other human rights breaches to which many of them are systematically and routinely subjected; it is also not morally permissible on any reading of ethical codes of the Western world and most places beyond.
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Chamberlain, Chris (1999) Counting the Homeless: Implications for Policy Development, Census of Population and Housing: Occasional Paper, Cat. No. 2041.0 (Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics)
Chamberlain, Chris and Mackenzie, David (1998) Youth Homelessness: Early Intervention and Prevention (Erskineville: Australian Centre for Equity Through Education)
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Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) is the peak organisation for women with all types of disabilities in Australia. It is a federating body of individuals and networks in each State and Territory of Australia and is made up of women with disabilities and associated organisations. The national secretariat is located in Tasmania, an island State of Australia. WWDA is run by women with disabilities, for women with disabilities. It is the only organisation of its kind in Australia and one of only a very small number internationally. WWDA is inclusive and does not discriminate against any disability. WWDA seeks to ensure opportunities in all walks of life for all women with disabilities. In this it aims to increase awareness of, and address issues faced by, women with disabilities in the community. WWDA seeks to ensure the advancement of education of society to the status and needs of women with disabilities in order to promote equity, reduce suffering, poverty, discrimination and exploitation of women with disabilities. WWDA is unique, in that it operates as a national disability organisation; a national women's organisation; and a national human rights organisation.
WWDA addresses disability within a social model, which identifies the barriers and restrictions facing women with disabilities as the focus for reform.
The aim of Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) is to be a national voice for the needs and rights of women with disabilities and a national force to improve the lives and life chances of women with disabilities.
The objectives of Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) are:
More information about Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) can be found on WWDA's website at: www.wwda.org.au
Women with disabilities are, from the government record, one of the most marginalised and disadvantaged groups in Australia. Analysis of data available from a variety of sources, gives us the following information about women with disabilities in Australia.
(Sources: Anderson 1996; Frohmader 1998; WWDA 1998; WWDA 1999, ABS 1999, ABS 1993, AIHW 1998, AIHW 1999, AIHW 2000, Currie 1996, Brady and Grover 1997, Temby 1997, Cooper and Temby 1997, Horsley 1991, Binstead 1997, Rutnam, Martin-Murray and Smith 1999, Warburton et al 1999).
This site was developed by Carolyn Frohmader for Women With Disabilities Australia.