A Clean Start

Housing insecurity can strip away privacy, safety, hygiene, connection and the ordinary routines that help people feel seen. On Census night 2021, the ABS estimated 122,494 people in Australia were experiencing homelessness. In 2024–25, AIHW recorded almost 289,000 specialist homelessness service clients, with family and domestic violence affecting 40% of clients and First Nations people making up 29%. The need for practical support and human connection is clear: in 2024/25 Orange Sky delivered 122,043 loads of laundry, 6,332 warm showers and 126,792 hours of conversation. Through Cass’s self-filmed diary, A Clean Start brings these figures back to human experience, showing how quickly housing security can be disrupted and why connection, respectful language and support services matter.

Our impact vision is to help shift the public narrative around homelessness from stigma to connection and shared responsibility. Centred on Cass’s lived experience and the everyday work of Orange Sky’s laundry, shower and conversation services, A Clean Start invites audiences to understand how quickly housing security can be lost and how meaningful it is to be met with care and consistency. The campaign seeks to reduce stigma, promote respectful language, strengthen pathways to support and encourage practical action through volunteering, donations, community screenings, partnerships and advocacy for stronger homelessness prevention and support services.

In the short term, A Clean Start aims to shift audience understanding of homelessness and the pressures that can disrupt housing security, including illness, job loss, family disruption, rising costs and limited support. Centred on Cass’s voice, the film invites viewers to recognise her complexity, humour, resilience and self-worth.
In the medium term, the impact campaign will support community screenings, education resources, facilitated conversations and partner activity that encourage respectful language, donations, volunteering and practical support for people experiencing housing insecurity.
In the long term, we hope the film contributes to stronger public support for community-led services, greater attention from decision makers, and a wider culture of practical care and shared responsibility.
Impact will be tracked through screening reach, audience feedback, resource use, volunteer and donor enquiries, partner engagement and decision-maker attendance.

Through the project’s relationship with Orange Sky, the production has access to Cass, founders Nic Marchesi and Lucas Patchett, volunteers and Orange Sky Friends, the people who access its services. The production approach is consent-led and trauma-informed, with ongoing check-ins around participant safety, privacy, language, family references, location details and the use of personal footage in the film and campaign materials.
Michael is introduced with care as an additional lived-experience voice. Cass and Michael’s self-filming will be supported with clear boundaries around what they choose to record and share. Before release, care will be taken to consider the impact of publicity, media and social media exposure. The film remains centred on participant agency and ethical storytelling, allowing the story to be grounded in real shifts, conversations and lived experience rather than outside observation alone.

Calls to action will be simple, practical and matched to each audience. Viewers will be invited to donate to the Documentary Australia campaign, support Orange Sky and aligned services, volunteer, start a workplace giving team, use the discussion guide and invite local decision makers into a conversation.
Schools, workplaces and community groups will be encouraged to use discussion guides exploring dignity, housing insecurity, cost-of-living pressure, social isolation, respectful language and practical care.

Donors and corporate partners will be invited to support outreach, screenings, education resources and frontline services. Local, state and federal decision makers will be encouraged to engage with the film, attend screenings and support long-term responses to homelessness prevention, housing security and community-led care.
Across all audiences, the campaign will ask a simple question: What happens when society chooses conversation over judgement?