Page 4127 - Week 15 - Thursday, 17 December 1992
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option of going home. There are some young people who will not even have somewhere safe to sleep on Christmas night; but their main concern is day-to-day survival, and Christmas will pass mostly unnoticed, except for feeling more alone than usual.
After writing his report last Christmas Eve, Bert Huber left the office and found a young person walking around alone, peering into shop windows. He said that the loneliness these people feel is more acute at Christmas. The money that full congregations will donate to churches during Christmas Day services will come too late. He says:
People who've never been to church before will put $100 in the plate, but the damage is already done. Many of our kids see Christmas as a hassle or worse. Others who have come from families that did celebrate Christmas are still searching for the magic. And now that they're out of home, it is even more devastating because the magic definitely isn't going to happen.
In the past year Open Family's Extend-A-Family Foster Scheme has placed more than 70 disadvantaged or homeless young people into caring homes in Canberra. They have helped more than 20 of them move into semi-independent living and 18 returned home to their families. This year CANA House provided shelter for about 100 young people and staff to continue to support more than the 40 who have moved on. Currently, Open Family also offers support and assistance for six young people living in two satellite houses.
Madam Speaker, Open Family is financed through government and private funding on about a fifty-fifty basis. The emergency accommodation is funded through the generosity of the community, while the foster care program is funded through the ACT Government family services branch. However, at Christmas there is always a gap of about $10,000 or more to meet the extra demands Christmas generates. For this reason I would invite members and anybody else in this place who is interested to join me and the CANA coordinators from Open Family in a few minutes, after the close of business. Feel free to slip in your donation. Madam Speaker, I thank the Assembly for giving me the extra time. I wish everybody a merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Valedictory
MS ELLIS (4.35): Madam Speaker, I will be very brief, given the time. As a new member of this Assembly, I would like to take the opportunity of Christmas, more than the opportunity of my 12-month anniversary here, to make a few comments. As a new member, there is an awful lot of growing and learning to be done in this place, as I am sure we are all aware, and I would like to place on record my personal thanks in particular to the staff in the Committee Office and the staff in the Assembly Secretariat for the help and dedication that they have shown to me, and I know to everybody else in this Assembly through the year. Without their help I would not have been able to have survived this long. I wish to thank them very much and to wish them and their families the very best for Christmas, a safe and happy time, and the very best for 1993.
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