Page 4633 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 19 October 2010
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For most Canberran families this transitional stage for young people can be an experience of trial and error. Young people will leave home and then come back, then stay at home for a while before they move on to try something else. Many young people want to explore different aspects of being a young adult from a safe and supportive base. They need support and guidance and sometimes what parents call picking up the pieces. Those supports are provided by family, friends and other networks within the young person’s life.
Young people transitioning from care may not have the same family or carer supports to help them during this period. This can be a stressful time when relationships with families or carers are tested and can become fractured. There need to be improvements to the systems available to help those young people who do not have a range of suitable support mechanisms. They need more coordinated and integrated supports; people who they trust and who they can talk to about their concerns; and services they feel they can engage with which provide opportunities and options. It is also important that those young people with particular needs, such as those with a disability, receive high-quality supports and services that are customised to meet their individual needs.
The government already provides a number of services to support young people, including those transitioning from care, through the $8.4 million it allocates to purchasing services from the non-government sector in the youth services and family support programs. Work on ensuring that these programs are most effectively targeted to the current needs within the ACT community is underway with the development of a service delivery framework for funded services working with vulnerable children, young people and their families. Other work relates to the improvement of housing options for young people and measures to reduce youth homelessness in the ACT. These pieces of work link into the continuum of services needed to support young people as they move into independent living.
We are committed to improving services for young people transitioning from care by developing a realigned and integrated system response to support young people as they transition from care. This new model of service delivery will provide flexible options to meet the individual needs of young people while they are in care and when they transition from care.
How will this be done? The first phase of this work has commenced. Earlier in the year a consultant met and discussed with agencies across government the priority of access to particular services that could be provided to meet the needs of these young people. This has resulted in the development of draft protocols for young people during care and transitioning from care which will be finalised as part of this process. These protocols will provide more streamlined and supported access to Centrelink entitlements and ensure that these young people receive specialised individual case management assistance from Centrelink when required.
Draft protocols were also prepared with headspace ACT and the Junction Youth Health Service, for improving young people’s abilities to access health and mental health services, a crucial service for young people. Discussions with the Department
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