Australian homeless

Homeless flood into hospitals

EMERGENCY departments are struggling to cope with growing numbers of homeless people seeking shelter and assistance because of a lack of emergency accommodation.

the Age, 

22 February, 2012

In a submission to the coming state budget, the Australian Medical Association urges the state government to spend $2.8 million on 50 extra beds for homeless patients who are discharged from the hospital at night.

''Patients in distress, who have been discharged from hospital during the night, and do not have a home to go to, should be provided with accommodation, meals and services which meet their needs,'' the submission says.

The association's Victorian president, Harry Hemley, warned homeless people were left languishing in hospital beds, costing thousands of dollars a day because there was nowhere else for them to go. He said the recent case of a 31-year-old homeless man who was murdered after being discharged from The Alfred hospital and left by police in St Kilda underscored the need for more crisis accommodation. ''We recommend $2.8 million over four years to supply extra beds so police have somewhere to put these people after they are discharged from hospital rather than languishing in a hospital bed, costing thousands of dollars a day,'' Dr Hemley said.

Opposition housing spokesman Richard Wynne said the government had axed a pilot program that would have placed specialist homeless referral workers in casualty departments to help doctors and nursing staff offer assistance and find accommodation. Mr Wynne said he was not arguing that the man who was murdered in St Kilda would have necessarily been alive if the policy had been in place. But he said: ''I will argue however that Victoria Police could have referred [the man] to a specialist homeless referral worker at the hospital who would have had access to funds to find a cheap motel bed for the night.''

Georgina Phillips, an emergency physician at St Vincent's, a hospital that has special programs in place to deal with homeless people, said anecdotally the problem was certainly getting worse. ''The classic old man on the street, that still exists, but now it is all different kinds of people and often with chronic mental illness and substance abuse, often all packaged together,'' Dr Phillips said. ''I strongly believe this is an issue that all hospitals should be on top of.

''It does require a lot of co-ordination and special resources put into looking after the most vulnerable people in our community and it requires long-term resources, not just a one-off fix. There are certainly drug and alcohol issues, violence is a big issue, lack of affordable housing, lack of flexibility for people with mental illness. It's a problem we face every day.''

Victorian chairman of the Australasian College for Emergency Medicine, Dr Simon Judkins, said emergency departments were increasingly being forced to spend time dealing with people with complex social problems seeking help.

A spokeswoman for Housing Minister Wendy Lovell said: ''The government's concern about homelessness is demonstrated by the $76.7 million Victorian Homelessness Action Plan, released last October, saying it would 'implement innovative ways to tackle homelessness'