Beyond Wishful Thinking:Opportunities Presented by the Current Reforms in Victoria's Homeless Service System

The Support and Accommodation Rights Service (SARS) is a program of the Council to Homeless Persons (Vic) that provides advocacy services to people who have a complaint about an aspect of the service they have received from a Victorian SAAP service. SARS is underpinned by the belief that various structures in society and the Homelessness Service System (HSS) contain power imbalances, and that advocacy is one means of addressing the imbalance between service providers and service users. While some service user rights are articulated within the SAAP Act 1994 as well as the various International Treaties to which Australia is a signatory, it is our experience during over ten years of operation, that while many SAAP services work from a rights-based platform, there are still consistent and routine breaches of service users rights within the HSS.