Page 881 - Week 03 - Thursday, 7 April 2022
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2½ thousand training places over two years. Through JobTrainer, young people can access free vocational education and training in key industries and occupations that are in demand in the ACT, including aged care, disability care, early childhood education and care, and digital skills.
While addressing the challenges of the pandemic, we progressed our key initiatives to promote life-long learning. This helps all individuals to be prepared for new opportunities, empowered with the knowledge and skills they need to make a difference. Through the technology enabled learning program we continued to provide access to technology for ACT public secondary schools. Since 2018, we have supplied 34,000 Chromebook laptops to secondary students. This includes more than 3,000 laptops being deployed to students who were new to ACT public secondary schools at the beginning of 2021. Where secondary students did not have internet at home, we have also provided free access to support their learning.
The ACT government is committed to Canberra’s children and young people having access to quality learning environments, and we are continuing to build new schools and deliver upgrades and expansions. This includes construction of the Evelyn Scott School in Denman Prospect to allow the high school to open in 2023; a primary school in Throsby and a high school in Kenny; and delivering new school infrastructure and expansions at Franklin School, Campbell Primary School, Amaroo senior school and Gold Creek Senior School, to name just a few.
We have committed $12.9 million over four years for a Future of Education Equity fund. These grants will help disadvantaged families meet their children’s educational expenses and deliver a two-year trial at five schools to provide breakfast and lunch three days a week for students who require it. Evidence shows children learn better when they have adequate food for the school day, and this trial will support all children to enter the classroom ready to learn regardless of their family circumstances.
Mr Acting Speaker, the mental health of young people remains a key priority. We are improving access to existing mental health services for children and young people by providing an additional $8½ million over four years, commencing in August 2021, to support the mental health of young people and their families. This new funding will enable the expansion of the operation of Catholic Care’s youth and wellbeing program, which offers multidisciplinary outreach support for young people aged 12 to 25 years with mental health concerns, a trial of Orygen’s moderated online social therapy program, and funding for Parentline to expand the existing support for parents.
In 2021, we launched Mindmap, the 24/7 online youth navigation portal to help young people, families and carers better navigate mental health services and resources available to Canberrans. In developing Mindmap, the team consulted with young people on what was needed to create an effective mental health online youth navigation portal. The need for this dedicated service was identified by young people themselves during the 2018 ACT Youth Assembly and in the Office for Mental Health and Wellbeing’s review of children and young people in 2019.
We are supporting young people to build resilience and encourage help-seeking with the Youth Aware of Mental Health program, a mental health promotion and suicide
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