Page 5770 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 7 December 2011
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Furthermore, I believe that the capacity to engage other specialist individuals and groups to assist with the development and implementation of the blueprint already exists both through the task force and through other mechanisms. For example, the task force has already created two specialist working groups, one focused on meeting the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people and one looking at enhancing accommodation options for vulnerable young people.
We know Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people comprise up to 40 per cent of young people in custody at any given time. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander working group has been established to provide advice to the task force on contemporary best practice, successful relevant service initiatives in other jurisdictions and other creative potential solutions and how best to engage local Indigenous service providers, community groups and individuals to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people at risk or involved with youth justice.
If the ACT is to succeed in reducing our over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, more effective programming for young Aboriginal offenders must be identified and implemented. The task force has also created an accommodation working group. This group will provide advice to the task force along the same lines as advice provided by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander working group. However, the accommodation working group will also provide advice on how best to engage local housing and homelessness service providers, community groups and individuals to support children and young people at risk.
If the ACT is to succeed in minimising children and young people’s exposure to the criminal justice system and ultimately diverting them from that system altogether, suitable accommodations, including effective use of existing resources, ought to be identified and implemented. Even though they have met, both working groups are still finalising their membership. However, the membership of both groups will include at least a member of the task force as well as government and community representatives, including young people.
There is also the potential to expand the task force itself to facilitate the inclusion of expert and specialist input—for example, from fields such as child and adolescent psychology, trauma and abuse. Ultimately, the task force has the capacity to expand and contract, bend and twist, especially as it moves through each new phase of the development and implementation of the blueprint. The task force also has the capacity to evolve beyond its current shape into something new and perhaps longer lasting.
Ms Hunter also is concerned that youth justice practice ought to be based on evidence and based into the future. But I wish to remind the Assembly that there is a significant amount of peer review research available. Indeed, when I tabled the government’s response to the commission’s report in this place in October, I acknowledged the evidence base used by the commission to inform its recommendations.
I noted that in a number of areas the commission applied contemporary Australian and international research to support its recommendations. I also noted that this
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