On Monday the pair won a tribunal case against the Office of the NSW Public Guardian, which essentially gives Ms Young's charge the right to choose where he lives with the supports he needs.

It has taken more than 18 months for the tenacious salon owner to wade through the complexities and horrifying inadequacies of the country's mental health system to find a better outcome for the man she rescued off the streets of Lavington in 2017.

The big-hearted hairdresser is the first to admit she was forced to become somewhat of a "public nuisance" to make any inroads as she hammered on doors, wrote letters, rang, left messages and rang back again and again to champion Les's cause.

"You've got to have a lot of mongrel in you to get anywhere in this system," Ms Young said.

"You have to be a rottweiler and a rocket scientist to get through it and to understand the bureaucracy.

"I'm still shocked how some decisions can be made; how people can sleep at night knowing there is so much suffering going on under their watch."

Ms Young said an "over the moon" Les now felt he had some freedom.

"He was placed in the care of the public guardian when he was 16 and he felt he could never escape the institutionalised thinking and treatment," she said.

"The first week we met, he said he needed to escape that.

"He is the product of a f***ed up system - from the moment he went into foster care at the age of six it has been a downhill slide."

Ms Young is under no illusion the pair is now on easy street.

The next hurdle is organising an appropriate NDIS plan.

But she's relieved and confident of the way forward; that together they can embark on a journey to help Les "make sense of his world".

"This result is a personal victory for us but unfortunately it won't make a difference for others stuck with this broken system," she said.

Tonight an interview with the pair will be featured on SBS The Feed, which will also examine the state of mental health services in this area.

"They were amazing and have put together a very lovely story," Ms Young said.

This is a woman who knows all too well - and often at great personal cost - that if it wasn't for her perseverance this roller-coaster ride may have taken a very different turn.

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But she refused to abandon her little mate "even when a lot of times he had given up on himself".

"I knew I had to see it through for both of us," Ms Young said.

"Les was waiting for me to walk away."

Now he's joyfully awaiting the arrival of a pair of baby cockatiels to raise and planning a visit to Canberra's Jamala Wildlife Lodge.