first published in the Anchor Annual Report 2026
Youth homelessness prevention must start well before a young person reaches crisis point. Too often, young people who experience homelessness have already been known to government systems for years through child protection, out-of-home care, schools and the services supporting them.
At Anchor, we believe preventing youth homelessness requires early intervention, a willingness to adapt, and new ways of delivering the outcomes children and young people deserve.
The reason Anchor has remained a force in the community is because of our ability to change, evolve and adapt as the youth homelessness and out-of-home care systems have.
This comes from a position of understanding, and a desire to innovate and find new ways of delivering the outcomes that children and young people deserve.
Anchor’s position is that the point of intervention should sit firmly inside that window, while a young person is still in care and connected to adults around them, well before they present to a crisis service with nowhere to sleep.
Today, young people leaving out-of-home care are asked to reach independence at an age when most of their peers are still living at home, being supervised and taken care of.
The distance between leaving care and sleeping rough is measured in weeks. Once a young person is homeless, education stops, work becomes impossible, exposure to exploitation rises, and contact with the justice system becomes more likely.
Every one of those outcomes costs the state more than the housing and the support that would have prevented it. Anchor’s programs are designed to interrupt that sequence at the points where it is still reversible.
Our Foster and Kinship Care work recruits, trains and supports carers across Melbourne’s outer east, because placement stability in childhood is one of the clearest predictors of whether a young person will still have a home at 19.
Our MyLife Project takes young people in from 16, whilst they are still in care, so that the move to independence is planned across years rather than triggered by a birthday.
Our youth-at-risk programs at the Lilydale Youth Foyer place youth workers alongside young people as coaches and mentors, holding a consistent relationship through exactly the period when most young people fall out of contact with services altogether.
Many young people now in youth justice experienced abuse, violence or neglect before they entered the child protection system, and arrived at the justice system with their sense of worth, identity and connection to community already eroded.
Anchor believes that community safety is served by investing in prevention by supporting young people to leave care with stable housing, sustained mentorship and a reason to believe in their own future.
This is what will prevent them entering the justice system or chronic homelessness.
