The periphery of care: Emergency services for homeless people in rural areas

‘Red dust homelessness’: Housing, home and homelessness in remote Australia

“…As well, family violence and feuding compromised people's personal and cultural safety as well the security of their housing and sense of home. Consistent with international literature on rural and remote homelessness service responses (Cloke et al, 2007), service providers in this study also reported fragmented service delivery systems. A dominant theme was that 'top down' funding without community consultation limited 'grassroots' participation and obstructed opportunities for locally appropriate service responses.…”

“…Service providers in the two focus groups did however feel that there was low priority placed on providing basic, respectful and appropriate housing and services to people in remote towns and communities, by some regional authorities, who are not based in the local community. This finding is consistent with international literature, that found housing issues and homelessness outside major urban centres is relatively invisible to policy makers and government funding bodies (Cloke et al, 2001(Cloke et al, , 2007. As discussed next, this invisibility impacts on how policies are developed and services are funded and delivered.…”

“…This resonates with the argument of British authors Cloke et al (2001Cloke et al ( , 2007 who state that rural homelessness is rendered invisible because 'rooflessness' or 'rough sleeping' is seen to be the indicator of homelessness, which is less evident in rural and remote locations. Similarly, the notion that people who are homeless are sleeping 'on park benches' does not apply in the cultural and geographical remote contexts of this Australian study: 'It doesn't meet those kind of stereotype notions that people think of someone sleeping on a park bench' (FG2).…”

“…Rural and remote homelessness and associated problems such as domestic and family violence present a contradictory picture to dominant socialecultural constructs of 'idyllic rural living', which render homelessness and family violence an 'out-of-place' phenomenon (Cloke et al, 2001(Cloke et al, , 2006(Cloke et al, , 2007Bryant and Pini, 2011). In Australia, the term 'family violence' is the most widely used term to identify the experiences of Indigenous peoples, because it includes the broad range of marital and kinship relationships in which violence may occur (Australian Government, 2010).…”

“…Homelessness in rural and remote areas has attracted increasing attention over the last two decades (Cloke et al, 2007;Cloke and Milbourne, 2006;Cloke et al, 2001). International research on rural homelessness indicates that a range of factors contribute to the invisibility of homelessness in rural areas, including homelessness being less publicised, underestimated numbers in rural locations, limited access to social housing, individual mobility patterns, the physical hiddenness of 'rough sleepers', the denial of homelessness by locally based people of influence and fragmented service delivery, which forces people to move to urban areas where support services are located (Cloke et al, 2007: 387;Cloke and Milbourne, 2006).…”