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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (9 December) . . Page.. 4703 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Yet the ACT is lacking a specialised magistrate to deal with these children's and youth issues. The committee also made two recommendations about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child - that all ACT legislation and regulations be reviewed to ensure compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and that all future legislation comply with this convention.

Due to the scope and complexity of issues facing children at risk, the committee could not go into great detail about a number of critical issues, including youth suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, juvenile justice and services for children with learning disabilities and children with specific disorders such as autism or attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. We are asking that these issues be looked at in detail in the next Assembly. Once again, this committee has highlighted the importance of a preventive approach. The committee also believes that giving children at risk a more active role in the design of services could enhance the quality and effectiveness of the services as well as empowering young people.

I will briefly go through some of the recommendations that I believe are particularly important. A number of these recommendations have already come out of other reports of the Social Policy Committee. The report on violence in schools made strong recommendations about family support and counselling services. We are once again making recommendations on this issue. The report on the adequacy of services for people with mental illness also made a number of recommendations which are repeated in this report. We have stressed again the importance of family support and counselling. These are fundamental to a preventive and interventionist approach. In our report on mental health services we said that, as a matter of urgency, we should give greater attention to mental illness in young people and address drug education and facilities for rehabilitation of young people who have problems with drugs.

In the area of substitute care, issues of concern related to respite for carers, care for adolescents and support for young people leaving care. These are related to a number of the housing issues that we have been discussing. Young people do not necessarily have the living skills to be out on their own in the community. Giving them a bed-sit is not necessarily going to be all that they need, if they are lucky enough to get a bed-sit. A bed-sit and the way it is located obviously are often not appropriate. A bed-sit is very poor housing for this particular group of the community. They become more vulnerable than ever in bed-sit complexes because of the social mix there. The housing issue was addressed in quite a lot of detail because it is seen as a fundamental requirement. The committee was very concerned about that.

In education, we must recognise that schools are key agencies. We have made a number of recommendations which, if supported, will mean that the work of teachers is acknowledged and they will be adequately supported in their work. The need for coordination between services has come up over and over again. We hear from government that they are attempting to address this problem, but we still are not convinced that there is nearly enough communication between government agencies. That results in the gaps in services that mean many children are disappearing from our systems altogether, except that we do find them when they end up in gaol.

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