Session spotlight - People first: building a workforce that can go the distance

Concurrent Session 16 | Thursday 8 October 2026 | 11am

Working in homelessness services is challenging. Demand keeps outstripping resourcing, frontline workers are increasingly expected to respond to trauma, family violence and co-occurring mental health and AOD needs, and too often the sector's own solutions — practice frameworks, models of care, training packages — are launched with good intentions and then left on the shelf. This session brings together research, workforce data and implementation experience to ask what it will actually take to build a workforce that can go the distance.

The hidden cost of frontline work

Dr Deb Batterham, Swinburne University of Technology 

Deb will present AHURI research featuring the first Australian evidence on workplace trauma among homelessness and social housing staff — drawn from a national survey of 578 frontline workers, interviews and workshops. The findings are stark: significant rates of post-traumatic stress, vicarious trauma and burnout, compounded by inadequate processes, chronic underfunding and poor work design. Existing controls largely manage the effects of trauma rather than reduce exposure to it. Deb will use the hierarchy of controls framework to set out what genuine prevention — not just after-the-fact support — could look like.

What actually keeps people in the sector

Fiona Caniglia, CEO, Q Shelter 

Fiona will share findings from a Queensland workforce survey of more than 400 people working across homelessness and housing responses. The data paints a picture of a motivated, values-driven workforce vulnerable to high turnover — with retention shaped less by pay than by supervision quality, workload, career pathways and genuine support for people with lived experience working alongside their peers. Fiona will unpack what the results mean for CEOs, managers, training bodies and frontline staff alike, and what can be done at the system, organisational and individual level to help the workforce thrive.

Holding the middle where systems collide

Stephanie Holmes and Elizabeth Stubbs, Association of Alcohol and Other Drug Agencies NT

In the Northern Territory, people experiencing homelessness are frequently also navigating mental health and alcohol and other drug (MHAOD) needs — yet housing and homelessness services and MHAOD services often remain disconnected, leaving frontline workers to "hold the middle." Stephanie and Elizabeth will share the development of two complementary cross-sector training packages designed to build shared language and practical capability across the housing-MHAOD divide — and what other jurisdictions facing similar disconnects can learn from the NT's approach.

From paper to practice

Sophie Parsons, Senior National Homelessness Specialist, The Salvation Army 

Sophie will provide a candid look at why practice frameworks and models of care so often fail to translate into day-to-day care. Drawing on implementation case studies from The Salvation Army's homelessness stream across metro, regional, rural and remote services, Sophie will explore what genuine, sustained implementation actually requires of organisations — and share direct reflections from staff and service users on what successful implementation looks like in practice.

This session is for anyone who leads, manages or works alongside a homelessness services workforce — and who wants that workforce protected from preventable harm, resourced to stay, and equipped to do the work well.

Registration for Australian Homelessness Conference 2026 closes 28 September. Save 10% when you book three or more tickets in the one transaction.