How Interagencies can get involved

For youth services and youth organisations, the way to get involved in the Youth Consultative Network is through your local youth interagency/network.  YANQ aims to use its links with youth interagencies across Queensland to get a picture of:

• the difficulties and opportunities for young people in different areas;
• the pressures that youth organisations and services for young people are under;
• initiatives and programs that young people and services are taking to address these issues.

When interagencies provide YANQ with this information it will help us to:

• decide which youth issues we will focus on for our lobbying, policy development or sector development work;
• be more accountable/transparent to our members and the sector generally;
• better link people across the state who are working on similar issues or initiatives.

Youth workers - this is your chance to become part of the solution for young people and tell your Peak Body about the barriers we face!

YANQ will not just collect this information, but will provide interagencies with any information we can find on the 'issues' we take up with government departments or others.  On some occasions we might also initiate campaigns around the issues being raised.  For example, during 2006 and the first half of 2007 a number of interagencies raised concerns with YANQ about the lack of safe and secure accommodation for young people.  YANQ has responded by providing as much information as possible about housing policy and referring people to the campaigns of other advocacy groups concerned about the issue.  Another issue that was raised a great deal during this time was the difficulty services were having recruiting and retaining staff.  YANQ's response was to form a partnership with the Australian Services Union in a campaign to address the relatively poor pay and working conditions of youth workers.

Interagencies can get involved in the Youth Consultative Network through a simple form (see below) that each youth interagency in the state can fill out (either online, or fax-back hard copy). If no youth interagency exists in the area, a community services interagency can fill out the form instead. YANQ will then collate this information and publish the collated results back via this website.

If your interagency or network would like to get involved, please contact YANQ's Network Development Officer (see end of article for details).

To see what the form looks like you can:

• Click here to go to an online version of the Interagency Form.
• Or download a printable version that you can fill out and post/fax back.