The Find My Way – Online Homelessness Services Portal (Find My Way) is a free online service available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It displays available homelessness services including accommodation options and connects people to service providers across WA.
Find My Way will help people experiencing or at risk of homelessness enquire about accommodation and available support services, while providing users with the option to store and manage personal information, including who to share it with. Find My Way users who are experiencing rough sleeping or primary homelessness and are not already connected to a homelessness support service, have the option to be directed to a Homelessness Services Connector who may be able to assist with referrals and other support.
Background
As part of All Paths Lead to a Home: Western Australia’s 10-year Strategy on Homelessness 2020-2030, the Department of Communities (Communities) has developed Find My Way to simplify access to supporting services for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness in Western Australia.
Find My Way maintains real time data on services and support across a wide range of providers and is a tool for people to securely manage and share their own confidential information. Find My Way supports improved referral pathways for the most effective response, and streamlines support for people who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness.
Find My Way is crucial infrastructure for a No Wrong Door approach to service delivery. Consistent with the No Wrong Door blueprint, Find My Way has introduced two information technology platforms: a Digital ‘Front Door’ and a One Story Database, incorporating agreed assessment and referral protocols.
Planning for Find My Way commenced in late 2019, with the announcement of State Government funding for the design and development of an online homelessness services portal.
During the first half of 2020, Communities engaged the Centre for Social Impact to complete a six-month co-design process with the homelessness sector. The team defined what a No Wrong Door approach to homelessness service delivery looks like and developed an overview of the features required within an online homelessness services portal to enable this approach.
In 2021, a consortium led by Infoxchange and including Anglicare WA, the Innovation Unit and Anthologie was awarded the contract through a Communities initiated procurement process to deliver Find My Way.
The Innovation Unit, as a member of the consortium project team responsible for engaging stakeholders in design activities, conducted extensive sustained consultation with the sector through interviews, workshops and events that have informed the design and operation of Find My Way to meet the needs of services.
A Lived Experience Advisory Group was established to help shape and inform the design and functional aspects.. In addition, Aboriginal people with lived experience of homelessness provided their voices in the design phase.
Alongside the consultation activities, the project retained a consistent group of members for the duration of the Find My Way design and build, bringing together all key stakeholder groups for the project. This ‘design team’ includes service provider representatives from Wungening Aboriginal Corporation, St Vincent de Paul, and Broome Youth and Family Hub, who were selected from 30 expressions of interest received. Communities, Lived Experience Representatives, and the project team have also been involved in the Find My Way design and development process, including testing prototypes.
For feedback and enquiries about Find My Way, please contact the Office of Homelessness at the Department of Communities at homelessness@communities.wa.gov.au.
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