Elder Bella Bropho – The Mother Theresa of the children of Matagarup

n this nation, nearly 20,000 children aged 12 years and less are homeless – on the streets – at high risk to violence and sexual predation. I have spent two decades working alongside the homeless, helping as many as I could into education, employment, trauma recovery and to a brighter future. I have listened carefully to their stories. For far too many Australians there is a hefty ignorance to the untold suffering of the homeless, of the vulnerability to mental breakdowns, to clinical disorders. We fill our jails not with the criminally minded but with the mentally unwell – with people who early intervention would have improved their lot.

In the last several years I have cultivated media and highlighted the extensiveness of children on our streets and of large homeless families; families of five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten and eleven children. It is an abomination – moral, political and otherwise – that so many children, that so many families are homeless in the world’s 12th largest economy, in one of the world’s wealthiest nations per capita.

Yesterday, I returned to Perth from Adelaide after facilitating …

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Georgina Gartland