Fireside Chat Recap: Wombat with Sophronia Armatolos

This week we sat down with Sophronia Armatolos, a youth case manager at Wombat Housing & Support Services — a community organisation in Melbourne's inner west that's been walking alongside young people, singles and families through housing crisis for over 30 years.

Sophronia's background is in politics and human rights. She started in a family violence service, then spent five-plus years across adult housing and homelessness programs before landing in Wombat's youth team. The work is intensive — long-term case management with 16-to-25-year-olds who are either rough sleeping or in transitional housing.

"I feel really privileged to have ended up in youth case management."

Here's what we learned.

What Wombat does

Wombat works across the full arc — youth, families, single adults, and family violence — out of Melbourne's inner west catchment.

Their youth program supports 16-to-25-year-olds who are homeless or in transitional housing, walking with them until they can secure stable, long-term housing. The team's support periods are deliberately long and deliberately flexible — that's the bit that makes long-term case management actually work.

Most referrals come through SAFI — a regular meeting between Wombat and Unison (the inner-Metro Western housing access point) where the youth services in the catchment triage incoming need together. Young people don't generally self-refer; they get to Wombat through an IAP (Initial Assessment and Planning) service first, which is the deliberate front door of the Victorian system. The triage is the point — it means people are pointed somewhere coherent before they get bounced.

Once they're in, Wombat usually meets young people at the lease sign-up of a Unison-managed THM (Transitional Housing Management) property — medium-term housing, normally up to two years, often longer in this rental market. Then the team layers on case management around it: weekly or fortnightly in the early stages, tapering as the young person finds their feet.

Beyond youth, Wombat runs programs for single adults, families, continuing care for justice-involved young people, a LGBTI homelessness + family violence project, and they hub the West Homelessness Network.

What keeps her going

"You see that some really incredible outcomes can happen for people when they give time and the opportunity."

The beauty of long-term case management is that it lets trust accumulate. No one's forcing anyone to fix everything at once — and when goals stop being rushed, they start being possible.

"Things aren't kind of forced upon them — and they're not feeling rushed to turn everything around in a really short space of time."

A day that begins with a warm handover

There isn't a typical first day. A young person might come in with another worker already involved — a previous case manager, a refuge contact, someone they already trust. Wombat leans on those warm handovers hard, because the alternative is exhausting.

"Just meeting someone and immediately bombarding them with questions or forms… is not always the best approach."

So the early meetings look gentle on purpose. A bit of assessment. A lot of listening. A coffee, a walk, a meet in a public space if the young person isn't ready to have a worker in their home yet. The forms get filled in eventually — they're not the foundation. The relationship is.

HOMEe, L2P, and the work of upskilling

The transitional housing only does so much on its own. What changes a young person's trajectory is everything that gets stacked on top — and Wombat is honest about how rare those stacking opportunities are.

"Having access to programs that really help to empower and upskill young people to build more financial independence — I just think can be some of the most impactful programs."

The standout is HOMEe — a partnership program where young people work in partner retail stores and get paid to study and work at the same time. For young people who've had education disrupted, who've had no family scaffolding under them, who've had no spare cash to gamble on TAFE — that combination of paid work + paid study + employer relationship is sometimes life-changing. Wombat refers in regularly and sees the impact firsthand.

Alongside HOMEe, the team runs L2P — the Victorian Learner Driver Mentor Program — getting young people the 120 supervised hours they need for a probationary licence. For a young person without a parent in the car beside them, L2P is often the only way that licence ever happens. And the licence is the difference between a job you can actually get to and one you can't.

Why housing first

Housing First isn't a slogan at Wombat. It's the operating model — and the evidence behind it is one of the clearest things in the sector.

"All of that — education, employment, overcoming addiction or mental health, recovering from family violence — is just so much harder to do when you don't know where you're going to sleep."

Without a bed you can count on, the foundational stuff goes first: energy, attention, time. Sophronia pointed out that navigating the housing system itself can become a full-time job — chasing IAPs, brokerage, eligibility checks, referrals. Once that load lifts, there's space for everything else.

Trauma-informed, in practice

Trauma-informed care, in Sophronia's framing, isn't a checklist. It's the practical work of being consistent, communicative, and honest about your role.

She talked about a young person she's recently started working with who wasn't comfortable having her in the home in the early weeks. So she stayed out of the home. They met elsewhere. The home visits will happen when they need to — Wombat has tenancy responsibilities to support — but they happen on the young person's timing, not the service's. "It's never going to be like an inspection."

And — crucially — Wombat workers are not the tenancy managers. They're not the ones writing the young person up. "I'm here to help you." That separation is part of the trust.

The dignity of a small grant

The funding question came up at the end, and Sophronia didn't waste it. Most program funding is tied — narrow purpose, narrow window. Brokerage — the small, flexible pots a service can spend on home setup, transport, a piece of clothing, a moment of dignity — is the bit that keeps shrinking.

Wombat is currently fundraising for Moments That Matter — a small campaign building untied funding for exactly this. Pet care so a young person doesn't have to surrender their dog. A trip to the zoo with their kids. A musical instrument. The things that turn surviving into living.

What "good help" looks like

We asked Sophronia what mobilisers can actually do.

"Really want to encourage people to continue to inform themselves about housing and homelessness in general — what the drivers are of youth homelessness, what the underlying causes are."

"Evidence shows the drivers are often family violence — literally not being safe to remain where they're living — or mental health issues."

Inform yourself. Push back on the stereotype that homelessness is a character problem. Support services like Wombat — directly through Moments That Matter, or through the broader sector advocacy run by Council to Homeless Persons. Contact MPs. Take it seriously upstream.

How to get involved

• If you're in Melbourne and want to support Wombat directly, donate to Moments That Matter — flexible funding for the moments that don't fit in a grant acquittal.

• If you're anywhere in Australia and helping a young person who needs services, Ask Izzy is a solid first stop for housing, food, health, and legal.

• Stay tuned for more Fireside Chats — coming up next: Micah Projects with Ellie Goharnia on Wednesday 27 May, 12:30 AEST.

Thanks to Sophronia for the generosity of her time and her clarity. The young people Wombat walks alongside are lucky to have her in their corner.

This is part of our Fireside Chat series — where we sit down with people running frontline services and ask them directly: what would help?