Page 2676 - Week 09 - Thursday, 9 August 1990
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step where young people's needs can be assessed and intensive support can be provided. They are very valuable when children need time-out - when they need the time to get away and think about things. (Extension of time granted)
Time is required away from families to assess where it is that the children are going. I very much doubt myself whether most children would necessarily choose to leave the family environment unless the situation was extremely serious in that family environment. I do not think refuges are ever going to be a substitute for that, except in cases, as I said, where children really have no choice but to leave the family.
I think the emphasis on a community context for accommodation was best made by Burdekin himself in comments he made in a publication called Liberal Forum. He wrote on the relationship between the national inquiry that he had conducted and the convention on the rights of the child. He said:
The Inquiry found that the most successful models for assisting homeless children are those where the community is involved. Programs which retain children and young people in their local communities - rather than warehousing them in refuges in places like Kings Cross - offer the best chance for family reconciliation, for continuing with education and training, and for avoiding the all too common slide into prostitution, crime and drugs. It was also very clear to the Inquiry that the community - with proper resourcing, co-ordination and standard-setting from government - can provide young people with a degree of personal support which State institutions seem simply unable to deliver. The Inquiry, therefore, did not propose a bureaucratic, "big government" model, but one in which government offers more effective encouragement and assistance to the community to take responsibility.
I think that is a very sensible approach and one which has every chance of long-term sustainability.
I will briefly mention also the importance of providing for other needs in this context. The health needs of youth in crisis are very important. In that respect, the reference in my colleague's statement to assistance to ensure that those needs are met is very welcome. I think that young people who are away from home are very vulnerable, and that has to be acknowledged and picked up in some other fashion.
I note that the Red Cross youth health service now has an additional youth health worker based at the Woden Youth Centre and complementing a team of two other people. I think that that is a very useful measure to combat this problem. I also think that the Government has been wise to
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