How Stepping Stone House give homeless youth a joyful childhood and positive future

• Stepping Stone House provides a safe place for young people at risk of or experiencing homelessness
• They received a $25,000 local grant from the QBE Foundation to help take their life skills course online so more young people can access it
• The QBE team are looking forward to volunteering their time and skills to help create and design education modules, including a bespoke financial literacy course.

In Australia, there are over 43,000 homeless young people. This is a statistic that is not widely known and can often be shocking, says Jason Clarke, Co-Chair of the QBE Foundation.

"I didn’t realise the number of adults who are experiencing homelessness in Australia, let alone the number of children, before I started working with the QBE Foundation," says Clarke.

"It’s quite startling when you work with these charities and realise the extent of need, but it’s also empowering knowing that we’re supporting organisations who are helping those who need it most.

"That’s what our QBE Foundation local grant program is all about - supporting organisations working in our communities to make a real difference."

As part of the local grant process, QBE employees had the opportunity to help choose which charities were awarded a grant. They were "emotional and proud" to vote for Stepping Stone House and to play a part in giving children experiencing homelessness the joyful childhood that they deserve.

The power of childhood memories

Stepping Stone House provides long-term accommodation, personal development programs and wraparound services for children and young people who are either experiencing or at risk of homelessness. With residents typically aged between 12 and 25 years old, Stepping Stone House is unique in that they offer support for years if needed.

"Our aim is to help these children become the very best that they can be," says Stepping Stone House CEO, Jason Juretic. "So even after our youngsters go through our programs, graduate and find their own private rentals – we still keep in touch with them. Just like I do with my own 26 and 23 year old kids, they come over for coffee, ask us advice or simply want to have a chat."

Children are often referred to Stepping Stone House by charities or the Department of Communities and Justice. However, many have simply heard about the service and arrive on the doorstep to ask for help.

"We have had kids hitchhike all the way down from Queensland," says Juretic. “They were living in a cave. Someone walked past them and said, ‘hey if you’re struggling – go to Stepping Stone House. They can change your life.’ So, they hitchhiked down to us and knocked right on our front door."

At Stepping Stone House, there is always a warm welcome. For Juretic, this means making sure that young people can experience "wonderful childhood memories" that they may have missed out on.

"We need to let them be kids," says Juretic. "That underpins what we're doing. So, we all spend time really working out how we can create fun childhood memories for these kids."

Juretic smiles, "One example is a boy I mentor on a weekly basis who I knew was a Batman fanatic. On his 18th birthday, I told him that we were going to go to the library, but of course that wasn’t the surprise! When he came out of the library, sitting on the street was a replica Batmobile. He was given an outfit and they went for a drive. He even went through Maccas drive thru! Patrick cites this as the highlight of his entire life. And that's just one of the childhood memories that we have created."

Supporting young people to design their own future

Ultimately, Stepping Stone House wants to create a connection with the kids that come through the door so that they can experience the "unconditional support" they deserve. This means retaining employees for as long as possible so they can become stable parental figures in children’s lives.

"Many other refuges have a 50% turnover of staff each year. We have a 94% retention," says Juretic. "That means kids see the same people for the average of 3.7 years that they are in Stepping Stone House. There's not a revolving door, they have a trusted relationship."

One key way that Stepping Stone House builds trusted relationships is by teaching young people crucial life skills that they may have missed out on. Their program currently consists of 806 life skills – and can be everything from personal hygiene to job interviewing, driving a car, fixing a leaky tap and meditation.

"We found that kids who had arrived at Stepping Stone House often didn’t have the life skills they needed to support themselves," says Juretic. "We had a young person, for example, who didn't know how to clean their teeth."

Stepping Stone House will use their QBE Foundation local grant to take some of these life skills online while maintaining the same quality of coaching as they scale.

"We are putting the 806 life skills onto an e-learning platform. It will allow children to click on various subjects – for example, health and wellbeing – and then they will be guided through each skill."

"With QBE funding it means we can hopefully reach even more children," continues Juretic. "We want to give this e-learning program free of charge to every one of the 550 refuges in Australia. So that's 43,000 kids that get access to it. And then if all goes well, we also want to give it free of charge to all the agencies that are supporting kids who are in foster care, residential care or kinship care. That’s 98,000 young people who are the most disadvantaged children in Australia. They can receive these skills for life. This grant from QBE will help change lives."

QBE employees recognised this during the grant assessment call, with many offering to support the charity with their skills and expertise to help build the modules and "make it look shmick", as Juretic puts it.

"We have some incredibly passionate and talented people at QBE, who are really committed to giving back," says Clarke. "I’m looking forward to seeing what we can all do to support Stepping Stone House in 2022."

Incredibly, 100% of children who have completed the program have left Stepping Stone House with employment, an amazing outcome for these young people. "We are providing knowledge that will steer them through life and improve their wellbeing and happiness," says Juretic. "Now they can live a compelling future that they have designed for themselves."

"We can’t say how grateful we are that QBE is supporting us – not just with the grant but with the support of their team who are helping us with the platform," continues Juretic. "And to hear that so many QBE employees voted for us and want to get involved – well that is so powerful."

Find out more about Stepping Stone House

Learn more about the QBE Foundation