Library Services for People Experiencing Homelessness

 On February 17, I spent a second day with the staff of Yarra Libraries and their outreach service. This time we were set up outside the injecting rooms at the Richmond higy-rise flats. As before we were sharing the space with other community service providers: OrangeSky was there with their laundry van again, and they also had a shower bus with them this time. There was also a presence from Ask Issy  which is a service that runs through mobile phones and connects people to services. The Ask Issy people were spruiking their site and were giving away phone charging banks.  It was very quiet, but all the staff from each of the services were saying that this quietness was really unusual and nothing like what had been the case before COVID. These days out in the community were the first in a long time since lockdowns had lifted. They suggested that the numbers would rise as they became more visible in the community and as word got around that the services were back in operati...

I attended an online presentation on February 2, 2022 that launched this report which is a collaboration between the Centre for Social Impact, the University of New South Wales, the University of Western Australia, and Swinburne University. The presentation was spoken by Paul Flatau (Uni WA), Jessica Dobrovic (Advance to Zero -AtoZ), Karyn Walsh (Micah Projects), David Pearson (AAEH - Australian Alliance to End Homelessness) and Shane Jakupec (NEAMI International), and a person called Leigh who had been without a home for 20 years, but is now housed and working as an outreach worker. Apart from the report, which looks outstanding and can be accessed here:  https://apo.org.au/sites/default/files/resource-files/2022-02/apo-nid315326.pdf   I noted the following from the presentation: 70% of rough sleepers had periods of out of home care as children 36% had been in prison at some stage 20% had been in youth detention when younger People experiencing homelessness can find it very d...

I spent a couple of hours today with two staff from Yarra Libraries in one of their outreach projects where they set up at St Mark's in Fitzroy to distribute books, clothing and talk with community members who are visiting St Mark's to pick up food supplied by Anglicare. They also have an opportunity to wash their clothes with OrangeSky. The books that were given away were weeded from their own collections. It was very quiet, with about five people coming over to talk to the library staff. Each of them took some new clothes and some took some books either for themselves of for their children. The staff were saying that this was only their second time at St Mark's recently, although they had been there more regularly before COVID. They expect to build up their interactions over time.  They bought all their gear in a library van: Service partners: Yarra Libraries works with some partners to provide their services to the community. These are: Thread Together - for new clothin...

  This article is old now but provides an interesting list of information needs of people experiencing homelessness So pretty much the same as everyone else. But it does make the point that these groups of people are not homogenous and their needs must be ascertained as men as any other user group. This is something I can help with working out what their needs are and what barriers exist that get in the way of libraries meeting those needs. Another important point is that libraries may not have all the answers to their information needs, but they should know who does so the role of information referral becomes very important. The author also makes the point that the difference between a library staff member providing a Service that makes the patron feel welcome or a nuisance is the attitude of the staff member.This is a good reason to work to understand Library staff attitudes as their feelings about working with homeless patrons is pivotal to the experience of the patron and in th...