Need somewhere to sleep tonight? Find help now
The Homeless Project

For schools

Resources for educators

A school is often the first place anyone notices that a family is losing its home: a student arriving tired, missing excursions, moving address for the third time in a year. These are free resources for the people who see it first.

Download the book free

The book we helped produce

Forty school policies, each one written by researchers in that field and ready to adapt to your own school. It is open access, so there is nothing to buy and no sign-up.

FreeFree to read, download and share

Building Better Schools with Evidence-based Policy

Adaptable Policy for Teachers and School Leaders

Forty ready-to-adapt school policies, each written by researchers in that field. A school can take any policy, adjust it to its own context and put it to work. The whole book is free to read and download.

Open access under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0: credit the authors, no commercial use, no edited versions.

Edited by Kelly-Ann Allen, Andrea Reupert, Lindsay Oades. Routledge, 2021 · 328 pages

Read or download it free

Why we are involved

The Homeless Project contributed to the production of this book. We offer it here because preventing student homelessness starts long before a family loses a home, and schools are often the first to notice.

The chapters closest to our work

The full book covers everything from reading instruction to climate policy. These are the four we point schools to first.

  1. Chapter 29

    Establishing effective school and community collaborations to prevent student homelessness

    Monica Thielking

    A policy a school can adopt to spot housing insecurity early and work with local services before a student loses their home.

  2. Chapter 31

    Promoting educational equity for students from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds

    Monica Thielking

    Practical steps so that the cost of participating does not quietly exclude students.

  3. Chapter 19

    School belonging policy

    Kelly-Ann Allen and colleagues

    Students who feel they belong are more likely to stay at school, which matters most for those whose home life is unstable.

  4. Chapter 14

    School trauma-informed practice policy

    Emily Berger and Karen Martin

    How staff can respond to students carrying trauma without needing to know their history.

If a student in your school has nowhere to live

Opening Doors is Victoria’s statewide entry point for homelessness services, 24 hours, free call on 1800 825 955. Our Get help page lists the other services worth knowing.

See where to get help