I wasn’t alone back then, I did have support workers (contingency hotels in Vic are run under more or less the same conditions as resi, so 24/7 workers and such).

I wouldn’t really give the system that much credit, because I know a lot of people it hasn’t worked for, the other kid who moved in is probably one of them. On my end, all I can do to get my needs met is being proactive about sending emails and text messages, and pretty much harassing people on the daily until they get things sorted. But that only works because the people within my care team are all receptive, have a good relationship with me, and do their jobs. If my case manager decided she didn’t want to follow something up for me, then it wouldn’t matter what I said or how often I said it, it would never happen.

It used to be the case (as recently as a couple years ago) that the day before your 18th birthday you would be kicked out. Nowadays it has changed a bit, and there are more support options. I’m eligible for a service that some other people aren’t (which I don’t really want to get into, it comes down to personal reasons), which offers subsidised housing (although operates differently to the housing commission). There’s about a 9 month waiting list for that, which I only got onto recently. In the meantime though, I can stay in my current space until I’m 19. They’re not huge fans of that, and as soon as somewhere comes up, the expectation is definitely that I take it and move out ASAP, but the option is there to stay around until I turn 19. I will lose most of my support network once I move, but in their place, something else will take it for a few years.

I don’t know what the “standard” pathway is for moving out, so I also don’t know what the backup is if my current plan falls through for whatever reason. But prior to this extension and moving into lead tenant, my plan after moving out was to live in a car