When Christinaray Weetra​ was a timid seven-year-old at a mainstream school, she tried her best to make it happen. Blend in, speak like everyone else, don't stand out. She was teased anyway.

But a childhood spent ricocheting between home and women's refuges to escape family violence soon gave her a mature perspective: "I had to grow up a lot faster than a lot of kids. And I realised that me being Aboriginal wasn't a problem. It was them."

This quiet self-confidence carried her through rough years as a teenager, including periods of being homeless, to a three-year stay at the Youth Foyer in Broadmeadows.

Melbourne has two Youth Foyers, a collaboration between the Brotherhood of St Laurence and Launch Housing. They accommodate up to 40 young people aged between 16 and 24 in studio-style rooms with communal areas. Support staff are on hand day and night.

A new $4.5 million foyer will open next month in Shepparton, and the model is an intriguing one for two reasons.

First, foyers are located on TAFE campuses and young people have to agree to study. And secondly, there is evidence they work.

Almost 90 per cent of current students are doing some combination of work and study. About 80 per cent of those who leave the foyer do so with a year 12 certificate or higher, and 90 per cent did voluntary work while they were living there.

Many young people being housed by homelessness services aren't connected to education, says Sally James, from the Brotherhood of St Laurence.

"We've got to make sure it's not just about us in the sector feeling good about what we're doing. We need evidence it works," says James.

Weetra was born in the Warumungu community in Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, but moved to Melbourne when she was very young.

She is now studying a diploma in visual arts at RMIT, and says wonderful staff at the Youth Foyer helped her prepare her folio and gave her general support and counselling.

"People say a young homeless person should just go out and get a job," says Weetra.

Being able to stay at the foyer for almost three years gave her the time she needed to create long-lasting changes, she says.

Weetra recently moved into a share house with two friends.

The 23-year-old artist has created a large mural to grace the walls of the Brotherhood's building in Fitzroy for Reconciliation Week, painting a river to represent growth.

Weetra often talks with her aunties and uncles in Darwin, who give her advice and guidance on her intricate dot-based artwork and to stay connected her with Warumungu family.

"Water, a river, is extremely strong. Over time it can make its own paths, branch out into all different types of places. The dots representing the ripples of new relationships," she says.