This session will feature short presentations as per below, followed by a panel discussion with facilitated questions from a moderator and audience Q&A.

Presentations:
Wentworth Park: A place-based response
Emma Barnett, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Clinical Nurse Specialist
Amira Karam, Case Manager: Missionbeat, Mission Australia

The Wentworth Park Tunnels in Glebe, Sydney have long been a hotspot for rough sleeping, where years of fragmented, short-term interventions left many residents disconnected from services and distrustful of support. In response to growing community concern, St Vincent’s Homeless Health Service, Sydney Local Health District, and Mission Australia established a place-based, cross-sector model of care grounded in consistency, collaboration, and trust. As the initiative evolved, it expanded to include multiple health districts, housing providers, harm-minimisation programs, alcohol and other drug (AOD) services, and community supports. The model centred on a consistent on-site presence, with multidisciplinary teams showing up at the same location and time each week, visiting each tunnel to engage with whoever was present. This approach shifted the focus from individual case management to responsive, needs-based support for the community. By embedding themselves within the Wentworth Park community and responding flexibly, the team fostered familiarity, safety, and trust among residents— many of whom had previously experienced long periods of disengagement from services. Through this foundation of trust, the services integrated healthcare, housing support, casework, and community connection in ways that prioritised dignity, safety, and choice. Care was trauma-informed, culturally safe, and anchored in consistency and relationships rather than formal referral pathways. The model reduced barriers to access, addressed entrenched health and housing inequities, and responded to the realities of living in public space. Early outcomes show increased engagement with health and housing services, stronger pathways into permanent housing, sustained tenancies, and improved continuity of care. Residents reported greater trust in services, renewed connections to primary and specialist healthcare, which has also resulted in fewer preventable hospital presentations and discharges against medical advice. This presentation will demonstrate how collaboration across health, housing, and community sectors—anchored in trust, persistence, and partnership—can strengthen services, embed systems change, and deliver tangible outcomes for people experiencing homelessness. It offers a scalable and transferable model for other regions seeking to use placed based responses to make homelessness rare, brief, and non-recurring.

Embedding Continuity of Care: LHD Partnership with Street Side Medics
Mekhala Wrightson, Nurse Unit Manager RPA Virtual Urgent Care, Team Leader/ LHD nurse Marrickville and Waterloo Street Side Medics clinics, Sydney Local Health District
Joanne Plowes, Clinical Manager, Street Side Medics

Street Side Medics (SSM) is a GP-led mobile primary health service delivering healthcare to people experiencing homelessness and at-risk individuals across NSW and VIC. While our outreach clinics provide immediate access, continuity of care remains a key challenge particularly for follow-up investigations, specialist referrals, and engagement with mainstream services. To overcome challenges in fragmentation, SSM began partnering with Local Health Districts across NSW. In 2023, SSM partnered with Sydney Local Health District to embed a Registered Nurse (RN) when launching our weekly Marrickville clinic. This model was replicated for the launch of our Waterloo clinic in 2025. This RN role provides a consistent clinical presence, building trusted relationships with patients and acting as a critical link between SSM’s outreach model and the LHD’s broader health system. The RN coordinates follow-up care, referrals, and results, while leveraging direct access to local health services and medical records. This collaboration demonstrates how place-based partnerships can strengthen service delivery for people experiencing homelessness while also modelling sustainable system change. By integrating outreach with local health structures, the model reduces service duplication, increases follow-up rates, enhances access, and encourages engagement with specialist care. We propose a joint presentation (20 minutes + Q&A) co-delivered by SSM and the Sydney LHD, sharing lessons learned, outcomes achieved, and opportunities for replication. The session will interest service providers, health professionals, policy makers, and funders seeking innovative, collaborative approaches to homelessness and health.

Local Collaboration Networks for the Win
Kim Campbell, Homes NSW

In the NSW Homelessness Strategy, the NSW Government outlines guiding principles for system change to make homelessness rare, brief and not repeated because people have a safe home and the support to keep it. These principles include shifting from service centred to person centred and from centralised to local service planning and delivery (placed based). No single agency or organisation can make homelessness rare, brief and not repeated. The current system is based on market style, hierarchal, control and command model of service design. This is not suitable for complex service delivery. A collaborative place-based approach is an evidenced way to get better long-term housing and well-being outcomes for people and supports innovation and learning across the state. For us, local collaboration networks are the mechanism for system change, enabling decision making closer to community, person-centred service delivery, optimal use of all available resources in a network area, lived experience knowledge at local level, and Housing First responses. When local collaboration networks are mature and integrated, they are best placed to plan service provision for their local area, oversee and manage service provision for their local population, coordinate service provision for individuals at risk of and experiencing homelessness, and collaboratively allocate resources within their area to fund the range of services they’ve planned. Across the sector we will work together to build on current local collaborative approaches to support development of mature Local Collaboration Networks, supported by state-wide enabling functions like strategy, access to system data and locally based positions. Network partners may look different in different areas, but will include Homes NSW, SHS, other NGOs, Health, Community Housing Providers, local government, private sector and other key partners. Each area will have its own relationships and ways of working. The presentation will explore core elements for success, balancing being ‘The Government’ with being genuine participants in collaboration, the challenge of covering the whole state with naturally formed networks, and how we bring Housing First principles into our collaborative approaches. By March, we’ll be well underway in this work and will be open about the ups and downs. The conversation would work well as a lead in to a panel discussion or in workshop format where one or more networks share their experiences of working with us towards this system change so far.

Panel speakers:
Kim Campbell, Homes NSW
Amira Karam, Case Manager: Missionbeat, Mission Australia
Mekhala Wrightson, Nurse Unit Manager RPA Virtual Urgent Care, Team Leader/ LHD nurse Marrickville and Waterloo Street Side Medics clinics, Sydney Local Health District
Paul Clenaghan, Program Director Homelessness, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Camperdown