Why Continuity of Care Matters in Homelessness Services
When someone reaches out to a homelessness service, they’re doing their best to navigate a system during one of the most destabilising periods of their life. To do that safely and effectively, they need a consistent relationship with someone who understands their history, context and goals.
It’s called continuity of care and right now, it’s under significant strain.
Trust and safety don’t happen in one conversation
For many people experiencing homelessness, trust has already been damaged by trauma, discrimination, or repeated service failures. Retelling their story again and again is not only exhausting, it’s known to retraumatise them.
Continuity allows people to:
Avoid repeating traumatic histories: When people avoid retelling their story at every touchpoint, they’re less likely to disengage and more likely to continue seeking support.
Build rapport: A consistent worker can understand nuance, context and change over time, allowing support to be more responsive and less transactional.
Focus on long-term planning: With stable relationships in place, support can shift from short-term survival to planning for housing stability, health and longer-term wellbeing.
Without continuity, people can disengage and disappear from services, making their situation even harder to address.
Workforce instability undermines continuity
The latest Australian Homelessness Monitor highlights how workforce strain is directly compromising continuity of care.
Survey and interview data from across states describes:
These aren’t isolated views, they reflect structural pressures across the system. With one stating that six out of ten workers are leaving the sector altogether.
The answer is clear: continuity of care is not a “nice to have”. It directly influences outcomes at every stage. With continuity in place, people can tell their story once, stay engaged and plan for the future. Workers can do their best work without burning out. And services can focus on outcomes rather than re-starting the same crisis again and again.
Without continuity, people will fall through the cracks. But we can change that.
Investing in worker wellbeing protects continuity
Supports like reflective practice, safe supervision and mental health resources are essential to continuity because they help experienced practitioners stay in the work.
That is where initiatives like SmartCare matter, funding wellbeing supports that enable sustained, meaningful care.
Continuity often comes down to one trusted relationship. And a system that supports people through instability cannot be built on a workforce pushed into instability itself.
We work collaboratively, and encourage corporates, businesses and philantropists to join us for collective action and impact. Please reach out at partners@streetsmartaustralia.org if this sounds like you.
Without housing, ending homelessness is impossible.
