Page 1178 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 9 April 2008
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program that seeks to further promote the integration of youth health services with mainstream services. This would enable service providers to proactively identify and better support marginalised young people in these regions and to facilitate their access to mainstream and specialist health services. The enhanced service will see the establishment of an innovative, effective and holistic youth health service underpinned by youth participation which supports them with their complex needs, such as mental health, alcohol and other drugs and co-morbidity issues.
Additionally, in the same budget, the government committed $5.3 million to the youth services program, which funds organisations to provide services to at-risk young people aged between 12 and 25. Other services funded under this program include youth centres, guides, scouts and the PCYC, and they will receive ongoing funding until 2010.
In 2008 there has already been and will be significant achievements across the ACT community for young people. This includes the implementation of the new every chance to learn curriculum framework within the Department of Education that I mentioned last week. As I said, this framework provides government and non-government schools in the ACT with a strong foundation on which to develop comprehensive, balanced and forward-looking curriculums for all students from preschool to year 10.
There has also been a major reform in the area of mental health for young people with the opening of the new step-up, step-down mental health service, also known as the steps program. I am particularly pleased about this initiative because, as the deputy chair of the Standing Committee on Health and Disability, I initiated the inquiry into appropriate housing for people with a mental illness which resulted in many excellent recommendations, the step-up, step-down facility being one such recommendation.
It was also pleasing to see the 2006 Senate inquiry into mental health unanimously recommend that state and territory governments establish step-up, step-down facilities. The ACT is the first jurisdiction to introduce a type of facility such as this for young people. The step-up, step-down model provides an early alternative to acute admission and ensures young people with mental illness have access to early intervention and more options for support. The new service funded by the ACT government will ensure that mental health consumers will have improved mental health outcomes and opportunities to increase their knowledge, skills and confidence to manage future crises.
The ACT government has provided $730,000 per annum as well as additional clinical support for Mental Health ACT. This will provide for up to five young people aged 14 to 18 at any time to be admitted to the step-up, step-down facility as an alternative to acute admission. Centacare operates the facility on a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week basis, and Mental Health ACT provides 40 hours a week clinical presence at the facility.
Additionally, Narrabundah House provides culturally appropriate supported accommodation to young Aboriginal people who may have nowhere else to go and supports them in accessing local Aboriginal services. For example, Narrabundah House took residents on a school cultural camp to Dubbo in 2007. They attended an
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