Prime Minister Tony Abbott must continue funding for programs that look after some of Victoria's most vulnerable women and children, especially those at risk of family violence, Premier Daniel Andrews says.

Mr Andrews on Tuesday urged Mr Abbott and Social Services Minister Scott Morrison to renew funding for the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, first struck by the Rudd government in 2009.

The Abbott government extended that agreement for a year in 2014, but it runs out on June 30 this year – leaving many in the welfare sector in limbo.

"I know Tony Abbott is worried about himself at the moment, but he should be more worried about the people who need these funds to live safely and securely," said Mr Andrews, whose government wrote to Mr Abbott in December asking for an extension to the agreement.

It would see the Commonwealth match Victoria's contribution of about $23 million to assist homelessness services, like those run at Hanover Welfare Services in South Melbourne where Mr Andrews was on Tuesday.

"Our funding is locked in," Mr Andrews said, for services "that provide support in the most desperate of circumstances. Mr Abbott needs to confirm this funding, not just for one year but to match what Victoria has done and for three years."

Hanover chief executive Tony Keenan said the federal government needed to provide his organisation and others providing homelessness services with certainty immediately.

"If we wait until May [the federal budget], we will lose ... staff, and the kids and families that work with us can't afford that," he said.

Hanover received $1.4 million in the current financial year under the existing agreement, but would be forced to reduce services if the Abbott government does not renew its share of funding.

Mr Morrison had not responded to the correspondence from Victoria about the issue, Housing Minister Martin Foley said.

Mr Morrison's spokesman, Julian Leembruggen, said that the previous federal Labor government had failed to make any provision for Commonwealth homelessness funding after June 2014.

"Daniel Andrews obviously did not convince his federal Labor colleagues at the time, if he even tried at all," he said.

"In contrast the Coalition government invested $115 million into the 2014-15 National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, which was matched by states and territories," he said.

Mr Leembruggen said that funding for the partnership would be determined in this year's budget, while longer-term funding arrangements for housing assistance and homelessness would be completed as part of a white paper on the issue.

Among those to have benefited from the federal homelessness funding has been 24-year-old Nyakong, who declined to give her surname, and her five-month-old son Daniel.

They have secured crisis housing for three months at a Hanover centre. She is from Sudan, and has been in Australia for two years.

She said finding a place to live with Hanover, after all her options had fallen through, had been incredibly important.

"I was so depressed, moving from one place to another with a little baby like this. It was so hard. It put me in a traumatised situation – but [now] I have people looking after me," she said.

Read   the article as it appeared online in the Age.