That feeling of hopelessness then can be exacerbated by whatever was the catalyst for their dire situation, one homelessness worker says.

Katharine Hodgens sees a wide range of clients who don’t have a roof over their head in her role as youth services manager at Junction Support Services, which is based in Wodonga.

The overwhelming shared experience for those seeking help though is their desperation to do the right thing by their children.

“If you do not have stable day-to-day accommodation it’s hard to get children to school and and child-care,” Ms Hodgens said.

“The trend we’re seeing is that people have less options and less support because of family breakdown and financial issues.”

The most significant trend though in recent times is a jump in the number of young parents who are homeless and how many – about 50 per cent – have had to flee because of domestic violence.

Junction previously highlighted how it supported 89 young parents under 25 between July 2016 and April 2017. Ms Hodgens cast doubt on whether homelessness was such an issue for young parents a decade ago when families possibly “stayed together as a community” to help raise the children.

“And obviously some are just about to become parents. It’s terrifying for any parents, let alone young people who don’t have stable accommodation.

“Mental health is a huge risk that we see. We’re really lucky that we’ve got a really great team of social workers, in particular for pregnant women, at the Albury and Wodonga hospitals.

“A lot of these young people have a lot of issues, not just around homelessness. Drugs and alcohol can be a problem, though it’s not a huge issue.”

Junction started out 28 years ago in Wangaratta.

It works to help disadvantaged people right across the North East through more than 20 programs, though many clients come from NSW given the transient life of many on the Border.

Ms Hodgens said it was important to note that young parents did not plan on becoming homeless.

“But there’s also a lot of very young women that aren’t aware of sexual health and become pregnant. It’s not until late pregnancy that they are actually aware that they are pregnant,” she said.

Junction helps these people in a range of ways and from a variety of backgrounds. Many are still at school, for example, or taking other education paths so they are given help to ensure this can be maintained while accommodation options are sorted out and locked in.

Many of these young mums or mums-to-be are very much living in the now.

They might also have a mental illness, diagnosed or not.

Overarching all that though is the “fear of the unknown”, especially for those still living with their own families but with the worrying possibility they might be kicked out at any time.

“There’s no stability,” Ms Hodgens said.

“They are unable to plan for their future because they don’t know where they’re going to be able to sleep for the night, let alone bring up their child.”

And when they are homeless, it’s not about sleeping rough or in sub-standard houses or flats. It’s what commonly referred to as “couch surfing”.

“Young parents are usually staying with friends or a friend’s family or alternative family members, but they don’t have their own bedroom.”

Where Junction has some of its biggest challenges is actually breaking down the resistance of some young people who do need help.

And a lot of that comes down to stigma over homelessness.

“They don’t actually want to acknowledge that they’re homeless because a lot of them don’t see it as an issue. They see it as ‘I’m staying with my mates’. It’s just that when it really breaks down, the weather changes and they’re like ‘this is not much fun anyway.”

Ms Hodgens said the work Junction did with clients was about creating pathways that met their aspirations.

“We’re not about putting kids into independence when they don’t need to be,” she said.

“Out goal is to re-unify them with the family home, making sure we’ve got a mutual agreement on how it will work that will benefit both of them.”

Junction works with other agencies right across the region – both in Victoria and NSW – in delivering the most effective programs or support to those in need or at risk.

But it has also acknowledged that a far greater role needed to be played by the communities in which these problems arose.

Ms Hodgens said a key way of doing this, in the first instance, was for people to show their compassion and understanding.

“If they do have a friend or family member who is going through a tough situation then they know who they can refer them to or contact,” she said.

“We’ll have young people who have moved in with a friend’s family and the family’s coming in and saying: ‘I actually never knew it existed and I don’t know what to do in this situation. I don’t even know that parents kick their kids out. This is really challenging for me’.”

Go inside our homelessness special feature