All homelessness services are required to participate in the national SHIP (Specialist Homelessness Information Platform) data system, run by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

Guidelines to SHIP can be found at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/about-our-data/our-data-collections/specialist-homelessness-services-collection/specialist-homelessness-information-platform

The Homelessness Networks have been advocating for e-referral capacity for some years in response to consumer feedback that consumers are still 'telling their stories too often' and 'why don't homelessness workers talk to each other?'.  E-referral enables electronic transfer of information between homelessness services, when a consumer has given their consent to this transfer.

The Department of Families, Fairness and Housing has been rolling out e-referral amongst homelessness services since 2018.  All services using the SHIP or SRS data systems now have capacity for e-referral.

‘E-referral’ refers to an enhancement to the referral tab on SHIP that enables SHIP and SRS users to send, receive and respond to referrals from other SHIP/SRS users electronically. The aim of this enhancement is to reduce time taken processing referrals and improve of the security of client information that has is currently being transferred by email/fax.

In 2020 a vacancy management system was built into the SHIP data system for Victorian Homelessness Services.  Non SHIP users are allocated access to the Vacancy Management System, independent of SHIP.

The Vacancy Management System is a key tool for the coordinated homelessness service system as it provides transparency, for homelessness workers, about all the available resources in the system and enables access point workers to 'best match' clients to available resources. 

The SHIP prioritisation profile can by used by access point services and support providers to create a prioritisation list create a list of a specific group of consumers. This function is used by the access point services to develop a 'prioritisation list' of consumers waiting for referral to homelessness services and by services providing IR2/Brief Task Based Response. 

The attached document provides screen shots and an explanation for how to set up the prioritisation profile. Many of the fields will auto populate from the consumer's support period file in SHIP.

Data is one of the key advocacy tools available to the homelessness sector. Below is an information sheet about some of the key data fields to focus on to inform advocacy activities.

Data is one of the key advocacy tools available to the homelessness sector. Below is an information sheet about some of the key data fields to focus on to inform advocacy activities.