A charity offering emergency accommodation to young homeless people has gone Down Under to set up a similar scheme there.

Nightstop UK, which has its national office in Otley Road, Shipley, has sparked what will be Australia's first-ever emergency shelter charity, calling itself Nightstop OZ. The scheme will be launched as a pilot at the start of next year in a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland.

Its co-ordinator Bridget Coyne is in Shipley this week on a fact-finding mission. She will be spending two weeks visiting some of Nightstop UK's 45 schemes picking up ideas on how to make the charity's Aussie alternative work. Last year Nightstop UK Chief Officer Greg Thom-on went over to help lay foundations.

Nightstop Oz is currently being run from offices belonging to a church-based community service called The Spot, at the heart of Logan City, an area rife with domestic violence and abuse.

The scheme has already secured interest from other charities working with young people and from the Government, said Bridget who is about to start recruiting volunteers from the Logan City and nearby rural Beaudesert areas willing to open up their homes for night stops.

Just like in the UK, volunteers - who will be given special training - will be asked to give a safe place for homeless young people to stay for one to three nights at a time.

"It is still early days for us but we are on our way now - we'll start off looking for volunteers from local churches and take it from there," said Bridget who hopes the Oz scheme will take off and grow.

"Two years down the line we hope to have a successful model scheme running from Logan City which will then become the head office and lead to other schemes being set up in other states. "We'll have to adapt a few things to make what's happening in the UK fit what's happening at home but the differences of what we're dealing with aren't massive. A lot of the homelessness is down to family breakdowns at home, violence and abuse."

In the UK Nightstop works mainly with 18- to 25-year-olds. The Australian nightstoppers will be mainly aged 16 to 18.

Mr Thomson this week officially welcomed Nightstop Oz as an affiliate, its first-ever scheme abroad and said: "This is proof that the Nightstop UK scheme can be transferred across western cultures. I have no doubt at all that it will grow in Australia."

Mr Thomson is already planning a return trip to Australia next year to help promote the scheme in other states.