Page 501 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 June 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
translation into effective and relevant strategies presents a number of challenges to welfare Ministers, which can only be addressed over time.
Youth homelessness is caused by a number of factors, ranging from social and economic conditions in general to more specific and individual factors. If prevention strategies are to be effective, they will need to go hand in hand with appropriate macro social and economic policies. They will need to address the issues in our education and care and protection systems for young people, and to respond to conflict, violence and breakdown within families. Prevention strategies must also be closely related to all government and non-government services which directly address individual problems in families with adolescent children.
Accordingly, Ministers agreed to consider in greater detail the problem of providing increased preventive support to families with adolescent children. This is an area to which I intend to give a high priority. Each Minister has taken these directions and initiatives back to his or her Territory or State for action. We will meet again in March next year to review the success of our work to date and the steps that still need to be taken to abolish youth homelessness in Australia.
In conclusion, I am pleased to be able to say the ACT has some services that were commended by Commissioner Burdekin. One is the residential alternatives for teenagers program, known as Barnardo's RAFT program. Another is Short Cuts, a support and advocacy service provided by my department. In many other areas the ACT is already developing services consistent with those recommended in the report.
They include the instigation by the Government of a comprehensive housing policy review, which will consider a range of accommodation issues relevant to young people. Another example is the recent release by my colleague the Minister for Housing and Urban Services of a report to the ACT Housing Trust on the development of a new youth accommodation program.
In my department new services for young people were introduced this year under the supported accommodation assistance program. A program has been introduced of mediation and reconciliation wherever possible to assist troubled young people to remain in or return to the family.
I have given you some examples to show that the ACT is moving in the direction recommended in the report. We are aware that much can be achieved through better co-ordination and integration in the delivery and targeting of existing services, rather than creating new services to meet apparent gaps, and this is the next area to which we are giving high priority.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .