About the campaign

Invest in young people because the consequences aren’t minor

In listening to young people who are in conflict with the law they often state that they want help earlier, and proper supports to keep them out of trouble. This initiative looks to improve supports and services for young people in conflict with the law i.e. young people who come into contact with the justice system as a result of being suspected or accused of committing an offence. While there is a lot of focus on the conditions for young people in detention and minimum age of responsibility, we clearly need to be doing more to stop young people going into detention and providing the supports and services they need to get them back on track.

This initiative looks to improve supports and services for young people before, during and after detention, with a focus on looking further into what needs to happen to stop young people coming into conflict with the law in the first place.

The campaign has two main elements:

A series of activities to engage the general public about why investment in young people is so important
Take advantage of the Saplings play by putting on a professional performance during the Sydney Festival.

Key successes thus far

Youth Action’s Strategic Plan prioritising throughcare based on consultations with the Sector and young people.
Invited people to join the Steering Committee to assist Youth Action in its work in this area.
Held meetings with the Steering Committee and developed a core set of actions for the two phases of the initiative.
Organized two NGO forums of over 60 NGOs focusing on good forms of collaboration and increasing outcomes for young people in the education sector
Two Roundtables with key government representatives, including from the Department of Communities and Justice, NSW Police, NSW Ombudsman’s office, the Department of Education, the Advocate for Children and Young People’s office, Regional NSW, and President of the Children’s Court, Judge Skinner, the Inspector for Custodial Services, Fiona Rafter, together with representatives from the Youth Justice Throughcare Committee and NGO sector, including Yfoundations and the CEOs of PCYC and Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies.
Conducted consultations with young people about what they suggested would assist them.
Partnership with ATYP to develop a play based on the voices of young people and the first read through of the script was performed in front of the Minister for Youth Justice and representatives from several government departments and NGOs leaders.
Two Youth Action conferences with key sessions with government departments about how to progress better throughcare.
Regular meetings with Ministers and key departments about recommendations and progress of the initiative.
Key outcome of the Roundtable process was the commissioning of a report on key tenants of youth work. This report was funded by DCJ and will be released in early 2024.

Committee’s key agreements and approaches

There was broad agreement that there needed to be coordinated responses to improve supports and services for young people in throughcare
It was agreed that the initiative would need to focus on Aboriginal young people as well as young people from regional NSW
It was agreed that young people with lived experience need to be involved in determining suggested solutions
It was agreed that co-ordination of messages and information sharing was important and what has been missing in the current environment
There is a need to do things differently and involve the non-usual suspects

First Three Phases of the initiative

Phase one:

Consultations with young people
Information gathering and setting up processes
Meeting with key decision makers

Phase two:

Running of workshops
Preparing options paper
Conducting messaging research

Phase three:

Engage the general public and community sector
Publish option paper
Launch website and public facing activities
Round of meeting with Parliamentarians

We have been very pleased with the success of the Initiative thus far and are now entering phase three of the campaign. This phase of the campaign will be public facing and looks to garner public support for the investment in services for young people so that they do not enter into the justice system. With the enormous opportunity of Saplings being part of the Sydney Festival, we will launch the public engagement phase of the campaign on 2 February 2024. We are looking for further investment to ensure that we make the most of the opportunities we have created in the initiative.