There has been a sudden increase of young teens from the suburbs sleeping rough on Brisbane city streets, youth workers say.

At any given time there are more than 100,000 people in Australia considered homeless, with a quarter of those aged under 18.

Queensland is one of only two states which have not yet signed up to the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness.

The $230 million pact is meant to give priority to frontline services helping women and children affected by domestic violence and youth.

Social Services Minister Scott Morrison has previously urged all Labor states and territories to sign up.

Brisbane Youth Service workers Jesse Nolan and Shannon Faulkner, who spend two nights a week on the streets trying to connect young people with services, say there has seen an influx of kids on Brisbane streets over the past few months.

"We had about anywhere between 30 and 60 young guys from the outer suburbs coming in," Mr Nolan said.

"And we found that this group of our young guys have stayed in the city a bit longer.

"We don't want them to get stuck or entrenched in that circle of homelessness.

"The youngest we've seen is 13."

Mr Nolan said they are also dealing with more teenagers smoking ice.

"Young people are going from not really using at all substances, to spending a couple of nights on the street and then starting to use ice," he said.

Ms Faulkner said it is a habit that is sometimes encouraged by the older homeless teens.

"They'll start feeding it to them, which is helping them make money, which is causing, I guess, the sort of generational stuff happening with the ice use."

Ms Faulkner said the rising use of ice was making a difficult situation even harder.

"We generally find while they're using it's pretty quiet, then the week after it's a nightmare".

'Just expect the unexpected'

Trai, an 18-year-old Indigenous man who identifies as homosexual and intermittently transgender, fled to the streets to escape a violent home.

"It was because of family and domestic violence — that's the sort of stuff I don't want to see in my life anymore," Trai said.

But Mr Nolan said the streets have taken their toll on him too.

"We've seen him be pretty significantly assaulted, engage in sex work with some of the older homeless community, incarceration," Mr Nolan said.

For now, Trai said he wants to stay out of trouble.

"Life's, like, you know, rough and tough but you end up like me, being on the streets at a very young or old age being on the streets," he said.

"Just expect the unexpected, that's all I got to say.

"The fights and getting picked on and, you know, struggling with people, communicating with people - struggling to communicate with people I don't know."

But Trai said strangers could sometimes be kind.

"I woke up at 12 o'clock with a generous guy giving me $20," he said.

"He asked if I was OK, I was like, yeah, and that's what I like about people - the generosity and the time they've got to go out of the way to spend with you."

Jack, who was about 12-year-old when he first slept out, said he had nowhere else to go.

"It was actually a bit scary and stuff, I didn't really know much people and I was a bit cold that night, so I just kind of had nowhere else to go," he said.

"I've learnt homeless looks after each other.

"There's actually just more younger kids coming on now, us old schoolies "streeties" just trying to help them out, so we say it's not a good idea."