A MISSED funding grant could force the closure of the Bathurst Women’s Housing Program and push 18 struggling families onto the streets.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Along with 79 other homelessness services across the state, the Bathurst Women’s Housing Program (BWHP) was unsuccessful in a tender for the NSW Government’s Going Home, Staying Home program.
BWHP, which opened in 1986, has kept 1600 women and children off the street in the service’s 18 homes scattered across Bathurst and Kelso.
Unless additional funding is secured, BWHP manager Sue Lasky said the program is unlikely to stay open past September.
“We’ve achieved amazing results and the workers are devastated,” Mrs Lasky told the Western Advocate.
“Our women [clients] go on to university and into employment; you know they’ve made it and they’ve part of society.
“Now we have to knock on their door and tell them they’ve only got a lease until the end of September.”
The nearest homelessness service for adults is the Orange Aboriginal Land Council, which won a $1.584 million tender.
Veritas House in Bathurst, meanwhile, received funding to continue its youth support services.
Funding and management for the BWHP’s 18 houses will now go to the Orange Aboriginal Land Council.
The BWHP has received funding every three years to run its services since it began operating.
Member for Bathurst Paul Toole said the BWHP still has an opportunity to show there is a need for the type of service it provides.
“If they missed out, they can apply for transitional funding ... they have an opportunity to show they’re providing an important service,” he said.
BWHP will now hope it can get help from the Service Support Fund, which provides “transitional” funding only, according to Mrs Lasky.
If BWHP is successful in its application, the one-year funding from November 1, 2014 will help ease the pain for clients and staff before the service’s inevitable closure.
Mrs Lasky said they are seeking legal advice over the outcome of the tender.
“Under their constitution, they [Orange Aboriginal Land Council] cannot provide services for non-Aboriginal people,” she said.
“We’re trying to look at it now, but at this stage it looks like we’ll close.”
The NSW Government says Going Home, Staying Home – its reform of specialist homelessness services – will make “services easier to access and help tackle the causes of repeat homelessness”.
It says the reform has been prompted, in part, by the fragmentation of the current system.
