Page 166 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 13 February 2019
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Government education policies need to ensure prevention and intervention programs are instituted within primary and secondary schools to ensure bullying behaviours and aggressive interaction patterns are addressed before they become entrenched. That is linked to, of course, the delivery of respectful relationships education in schools, something I have been on about since the beginning of the Ninth Assembly.
I note the call from the Youth Coalition of the ACT to prevent child homelessness. Indeed, they have been active in their lobbying, and my Greens colleagues and I met with them recently. The issues they raise have been around for a long time. The service model put forward by the coalition in partnership with ACTCOSS and ACT Shelter expands this spectrum of support from early intervention to tertiary prevention. Their submission rightfully points out that family conflict and breakdown is the primary risk factor leading to child and youth homelessness. Too many of our children witness family violence or are victims of it.
Research by the University of Western Australia on the cost of youth homelessness indicates that over a third—39 per cent—of homeless youth surveyed reported police coming to their home because of violence between parents on one or more occasions with 14 per cent experiencing police coming to their house more than 10 times. Indeed, we know from other research that as many as one in four young people have witnessed family violence in the home by the time they are 16 years of age.
For this reason it is right that the Youth Coalition stresses that the model’s central aim is to strengthen family functioning, including parenting capacity and parent-child relationships. Working on the dynamics of the family can support children to remain with their family or, if that is not possible, can contribute to maintaining a less conflictual relationship with family whilst safe temporary and long-term accommodation options are provided.
The other thing I add is that children in homelessness support services with a parent should be considered and funded as clients in their own right. That way their needs are considered separately to the needs of their parents, and their needs may well be different. As Dr Suzanne Packer said after becoming Senior Australian of the Year, we have to consider children as a group requiring focus in and of themselves. It is all very well and good to focus on family—and we should—but not at the expense of the child.
Children are amongst the most vulnerable in our community, and some children are more vulnerable than others. Think of the children and young people who are carers; we have more than a thousand of them under 15 in the ACT. Think of the children who have a parent who is incarcerated, and think of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are over-represented in out of home care and the juvenile justice systems. They all need special consideration.
There is, too, a need to cast a gender lens across programs and policies because the issues can be different according to gender. If we do not look at it, we may not find it. For instance, girls of puberty age and onwards drop off in their engagement in sports. Team sports can play a positive role in personal development, confidence building
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