Plans to manage the spread of COVID through Perth's rough sleeper community fell apart as the virus took hold, with the support sector laying blame squarely at the feet of the government.
Two years of COVID planning left the sector with a belief that homeless West Australians needing to isolate would be placed in suitable accommodation with appropriate support around them.
But senior support sector figures, who did not want to be named, said in many cases that never materialised and lessons from the early stages of the pandemic about the particular needs of the homeless community were ignored.
In one instance, two rough sleepers were left isolating on the fringes of a park just outside the CBD, where they were staying at the time.
It meant they were left to battle the elements, as well as COVID, with service providers stepping in to help where they could.
Ivan, who did not give a last name, and his partner had been living in a tent hidden in the bushes of Forrest Park in Mount Lawley when his partner tested positive after taking a RAT with outreach workers last month.
After those workers reported the positive result, it was decided to keep the couple in place at the park, rather than putting them in a hotel. It is unclear who made that decision.
A spokesperson for WA Health confirmed accommodation had been offered to the couple at some point but was declined.
However, Ivan said he and his partner wanted to be placed in hotel accommodation but were instead left where they were, enduring rain and falling temperatures.
Outreach services had been visiting them, but that ended last week when the couple were moved on from the park by the City of Vincent.
It meant they were left with nowhere to go.
Plans fall apart
When the ABC visited Ivan early last week, the couple's camp was cordoned off with red and white caution tape.
The City of Vincent said the tape was put up because the site was "vacant" when rangers visited on April 1.
"If people were living in the space, the area would not have been marked," CEO David MacLennan said.
"The couple returned to the site. City rangers issued a move on notice on 9 April and they left the park on 11 April after the designated isolation period."
Senior figures in the community support sector told the ABC that Ivan's situation was a sign of broader issues in how rough sleepers with COVID were being managed.
They said good plans had been formulated well before WA's first COVID wave but were not implemented properly once the virus began spreading through the cohort.
The breakdown appears to have started when it came time for the Department of Communities to find rooms for rough sleepers to stay in.
The ABC was told a number of hotels pulled out, diverting the efforts of department staff towards finding replacement accommodation.
Simple tasks become difficult ones
Service providers say that led to people being put into places that were not suitable for rough sleepers – a lack of balconies or smoking spaces was highlighted as a key issue.
They said the diversion also made it difficult for the department to provide the wraparound supports to help people with drug and alcohol issues that should have been in place.
Instead, they said the government came back to service providers at the last minute, asking them to step up and provide a level of support they had not planned to give.
It meant people already struggling with mental health and substance abuse issues missed out on help they needed.
In some cases, it is believed that contributed to them leaving quarantine early.
Seemingly simple tasks, like giving people in isolation painkillers, were made difficult by a lack of clarity over who was responsible for what.
One senior figure summed the situation up in just a few words.
"We could've done better."
Numbers of homeless, rough sleepers grow
Lisa Wood researches homeless health at Notre Dame University and helped advise the government in this area.
She said it was difficult for the sector to attempt to step in at the last minute.
"We have more people who are rough sleeping in Perth than we had before COVID, we have a greater public housing waitlist, a greater priority public housing waitlist, so all the usual demands on the homelessness sector haven't gone away, they've increased," she said.
"I'm not sure that the homeless sector itself could have done anything more, because there's not the existing resource or premise that could have been used for this purpose."
A government spokesperson said the State Welfare Incident Coordination Centre (SWICC) continued to provide "emergency accommodation and welfare assistance" to rough sleepers needing to isolate.
"Individuals in SWICC accommodation have access to clinical and psychosocial supports through COVID Care at Home and COVID Care Assistance programs run by Health," they said in a statement.
"To improve support for individuals while isolating, SWICC continues to engage with other public sector agencies and community sector organisations to coordinate appropriate welfare supports."
Lack of support 'for our mob'
Desmond Blurton-Cuiamara has been speaking to people who have gone through the system and has heard of similar experiences.
"There's incidents where people are having mental breakdowns. There's no support," he said.
"Just sticking these people into hotel quarantine and leaving them to fend for themselves."
He said things had gotten so bad in some instances that police had to be called to deal with concerns.
"How is that support for our mob?" he said.
One of the most frustrating parts of the situation for those working to support the homelessness community was the fact it was not the first time they have dealt with these issues.
In the early stages of the pandemic, 20 rough sleepers were housed in a Perth hotel for 28 days as part of a trial program.
At the time, Communities Minister Simone McGurk admitted it saw "mixed results" after more than half left early.
"Their reasons for leaving included struggling with the quarantine period, being confined to the hotel, not being able to smoke when they wanted to, alcohol and drug use and family pressures," she said.
In the past few weeks, the situation seems to have improved.
People staying in congregate living facilities, like shelters, were previously required to isolate – potentially in a hotel – if anyone they were staying with tested positive.
Now, those facilities can be split to allow groups to isolate together.
As of last Friday, 78 people were accommodated in hotels across the state, the ABC understands.
A document outlining the steps to be taken when a rough sleeper tests positive was updated earlier this month to refer to a "COVID Care Assistance Team", which helps manage people with complex needs including those that relate to mental health and drug and alcohol addiction.
Hotels unsuited to people with trauma
Professor Wood said the current situation seemed to show some earlier lessons had finally been heeded, although far later than many had hoped.
"[In the trial] there was support for people who had substance use, who had mental health issues," she said.
"We learnt that a hotel wasn't an ideal space, people felt too cooped up, it wasn't good if you had trauma.
"Those learnings have been sitting there from mid-2020, and now it's two years later."
Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said yesterday the government's work had been successful in supporting a "challenging community".
"They don't want to necessarily get vaccinated, they don't necessarily want to be in a hotel, so all we can do is provide them the support and the accommodation that they need to isolate where they choose to," she said.
Communities Minister Simone McGurk today admitted finding the right accommodation had been challenging.
"As we've had our economy open back up … it has been harder to find a broad range of accommodation," she told reporters today.
"But we have offered everyone who needs to isolate a fully-funded room, food and support.
"Where we can, we'll give people some open space and balconies and the like. That's not always able to be accommodated, but we've tried to do that wherever we can."
Ms McGurk said there was an understanding that keeping people in a hotel room for seven days would be difficult, but that significant work had gone into planning and making sure help would be available.
"I'm not sure what else we could've done to get that support in place for people, but if we can improve we're open to hearing ideas about how we can improve," she said.
Ms McGurk said she hadn't heard of people leaving isolation early or services being activated too late.
And while WA appears to have passed its COVID peak, concerns remain about what is ahead for those sleeping rough.
Vaccination rates remain dramatically lower than the rest of the population but are improving, with pop-up clinics at places where rough sleepers gather.
Winter is on the horizon, elevating concern about how the cohort will fare when the next COVID wave arrives.
"There's really high levels of comorbidity, people are often already sick," Professor Wood said.
"You overlay with that being outside in the cold, not feeling safe, not having access to your own personal thermometer, your oxygen monitor on your finger, you don't have your family around you to support you.
"All of these things make people more vulnerable."
'Just another form of abandonment'
Despite the progress that has been made, Professor Wood believes the most significant change will only come when rough sleepers are given more options.
"It's about having some choices for the people who are most vulnerable and also being sensitive to the fact that they may want to isolate in family groups or in ways that perhaps haven't been anticipated in traditional hotel quarantine scenarios."
But she emphasised it should never have come to this.
"It's just another form of abandonment, and this is a group that often have had abandonment in their childhoods, abandonment in many different forms, which is traumatic."
