CHP’s 2023/24 Annual Report is now available, covering all the highlights of our activities and achievements across 2023-24. Additionally, this year’s Report includes two fantastic feature articles:

• Joal Presincula, winner of the 2023 Beth Thomson Lifetime Achievement Award, reflects on her advocacy journey; and

• Winner of the 2023 Jenny Smith Scholarship, Charlotte G, shares essential Housing First insights from European jurisdictions, learnt during her study tour.

On the one year anniversary of the release of Victoria’s Housing Statement, CHP has released our inaugural Housing Insecurity Index. The Index brings together the latest available data on rent prices, the public housing waiting list, access to specialist homelessness services, housing stress and social housing stock to present a clearer picture of housing affordability.

The 2024 Index finds the key indicators of housing insecurity have worsened in the 12 months since the Housing Statement. Rents are continuing to grow at unsustainable rates alongside a stagnation in the proportion of public housing available in Victoria.

As the peak body representing the SHS, Council to Homeless Persons is committed to fostering a workforce that thrives. This report, and the potential for reform it spotlights, is an essential step towards achieving that goal.

CHP commissioned the report from RMIT University’s Workforce Innovation and Development Institute (WIDI) to understand the effects of the pressures under which the sector is operating, as well as other sector dynamics that affect the experience of the workforce and the Victorians they support. This, in turn, will enable better workforce planning and help us to identify initiatives that ensure SHS workers are duly recognised, supported, safe, healthy and fulfilled in their jobs.