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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3612 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

money that we are going to spend, I get worried. I have worked for three years in the Social Policy Committee and at least three of our inquiries have come up with recommendations about gaps in services which, if addressed, would have a very important positive effect on drug use in our society.

We need a holistic approach to this issue. We have to have integrated programs. We must look at drugs in the context of homelessness, violence, family breakdown, truancy from schools, mental illness and the parent support programs that are in place. We have to acknowledge that the people with the least resources need the most support. We have to help teachers, psychologists, youth workers and counsellors to work together. There is a real reluctance for the professionals to work together. We have to break down barriers to get a holistic and integrated response to these issues.

I will briefly go through a couple of the recommendations that have come out of our Social Policy Committee inquiries, to show quite clearly how this work has already been done in this place. If we are to get funds from the Federal Government, we should remember that we have already recommended in this place what needs to be done. I would ask the Government to seriously reassess those recommendations, some of which they believed at the time were too resource intensive. The report on violence in schools obviously was very relevant to the issues of drugs and young people. In that report we asked for more flexible approaches for students who were not coping in mainstream schools. We asked for programs for kids on suspension. We asked for flexible behaviour management support programs for primary school students. The problems start when children are young. Early intervention is important. We have to be very careful that we do not throw this money into crisis support.

Alternative educational and life skills programs for students unable to reintegrate into mainstream schools were recommended. We were very concerned about the disadvantaged schools in our community. We need to be clear on where those schools are and how we can support them. We asked for the police to work closely with schools and for agency cooperation generally. We asked for family support and early intervention. We asked for further programs to deal with students at risk. We asked for counselling services to be better resourced.

In the mental health report we asked for better facilities for dual and multiple disabilities, which is often about substance abuse and mental illness. We asked for a comprehensive strategy to provide early intervention services to adolescents and young people at risk of, or suffering from, early onset psychosis. Very often these young people are the ones who will self-medicate with drugs. We asked for better support services. (Extension of time granted) We asked for a holistic approach to supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. We asked for greater emphasis and improvement on the continuity of care. We also had an inquiry into the School Without Walls, which for many young people was the only anchor they had in our community and kept them on track. The issues of drug use and supporting young people came up very strongly in that inquiry. I believe that we need more than grand statements about task forces and strategies. We need to see real money put into real services. People working in the field are very clear on where the gaps in services are and have informed many committees, both local and Federal, about these issues, where we need to be putting in the work and how we will achieve intervention and prevention.

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