Akeisha was referred to Common Ground Queensland by Micah Projects in October of 2021. After interviewing her and making sure she was a good fit for our Supportive Housing for Families (SH4F) project, our Tenancy Manager moved her into her new home within two weeks. Since then, Akeisha and her two young children have been living happily in their own house. A young, sweet, quiet girl with a boisterous laugh and a charming smile, she is enjoying her independence.
‘It’s good knowing I’m stable now,’ she says. This is the first house she has ever lived in on her own. Previous to being in the program, Akeisha was couch surfing. ‘I didn’t get along with my partners mom, so I ended up couch surfing. A DV incident occurred, and child safety got involved and they referred me to Micah [Projects].’ Experiencing homelessness after a DV incident isn’t necessarily a surprising outcome. Specialist Homelessness Services in Australia reported that around 42% of all their clients during the 2020-2021 period had experienced family and domestic violence.
But now she is moving past that. ‘I’m putting the kids into day-care, and I couldn’t have done that before. I’m currently working on getting a job or studying. If I can I want to study a Certificate in Business Administration.’
It was at this point in the interview that her children began demanding her attention. As a young mother of two her main focus is caring for her children, which she puts before anything else. With two children under the age of four she is a woman under pressure. While her children can be demanding, they are sweet and lively, and have recently taken to pulling the baubles off the Christmas tree in the garage and rolling them down the slide or ‘cooking’ them in their toy oven. When we visited, the oldest in particular enjoyed doing a drawing with us and having her photo taken.
Akeisha appreciates how easy it is to work with our Tenancy Manager. ‘[She’s] been very helpful and if I need anything I can just message them.’
She’s hoping to study her certificate, but ‘gotta get the kids into day-care first before I can do anything.’ In ten years’ time she hopes to have a career job in business administration.
