By David Powell and Tiara Shafiq

A Snapshot of Queensland's Re-engagement Services (PDF) presents the findings from the Census of 'Re-engagement' Services in Queensland, conducted by YANQ in 2008. The aim of the Census was to learn more about what was available in Queensland to support young people (aged 12 to 18) who were disengaged from Education and Training.

Download the report here (as PDF) or read on for a summary.

Over 120 unique services responded to the Census and they provided services to 59 out of the 74 Local Government regions in Queensland.

The information that respondents provided to YANQ gives us a broad overview of: the types of services that are available for young people not in school or work; where these services are available; and what ages and demographic groups they work with.

Summary of Findings

In total 175 people responded to the Census, representing 128 unique services Many of these were located in the South East Corner and Brisbane in particular - however when comparing the maximum capacity of services (i.e. how many young people they could work with) to the population of young people aged 10 to 24, services in Brisbane had a worse 'capacity-to-population' ratio than South West and Central Queensland. In other words, if the data is a representative sample, it could be argued that there are less services in Brisbane per population of young people than in some other parts of Queensland. Having said that, it is still likely that young people in rural and remote areas have comparitively less access to services than others - unfortunately Census questions were not designed in such a way that it was possible to determine the location of services in relation to major towns or cities or the extent of outreach they could perform. Nevertheless these findings do suggest that lack of transport and the distance that young people live from services is a significant cause of poor access to services for young people from regional areas (an issue which is often raised with YANQ).

Not surprisingly many of the services that responded to the Census supported young people to achieve goals relating to education or employment - though only a few focused only on employment. However approximately 25% of services supported young people to achieve goals that were not directly related to either education or employment - examples included services that sought outcomes relating to secure housing, improved family relationships, less involvement in crime or participation in community life.

Almost one third (42 out of 128) of the services offered some form of learning support (e.g. workplace, community based learning). Most of these services provided learning outside of a school setting . While many of these 42 services might be described as 'flexi-schools' only six were actually registered as schools (two were run by Education Queensland, four were managed by a non-government organisation).

There was also a significant number of case-management services (17) represented in the Census and in-school support (14 - e.g. Youth Support Coordinators). The next most common type of services were community development (9), family support (8) and information and referral (6).

The learning services tended to employ higher numbers of staff than other service types and also had lower average case-loads than other service types (except for accommodation services which had the lowest client-staff ratios).

Gaining feedback from clients was a very popular evaluation tool for services, as was analysis of the rates of attendance and transition (to other services). Few services however mentioned post-intervention followup (i.e. following up with clients to check on their progress at some time after the service had withdrawn) as an evaluation tool.

The State and Commonwealth Education Departments were the most common sources of funding, followed by the State Department responsible for Employment and the State Department of Communities. Only six services mentioned donations as a source of income and only three mentioned business activities (e.g. social or 'profit-for-purpose' enterprises).

Most respondents mentioned that their services were targeted towards young women, but less mentioned young people with disabilities or young people who identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer as 'targets'.

Most of the services that responded were able to work with young people at all levels of disengagement. Slightly more services were able to support young people who were fully disengaged from learning (i.e. not attending school at all) than: a) young people who still had some connection to school; and b) young people who were fully disengaged and who had complex needs (e.g. homeless or suffering from drug addiction).

Young people aged 15-17 were the best catered for in terms of service availability. Children and young people outside of this age range were much less well catered for - the number of services available to 14 and 18 years olds dropped significantly compared to 15 to 17 year olds.

Related to this, a number of respondents raised concerns about the general lack of services for young people under 15 and who are disengaged from learning. Other matters raised by respondents included a call for greater flexibility in funding (so that services can work with a more diverse group of clients in more diverse ways) and concerns that services were unable to meet the high levels of demand that existed in their communities.

Download a full copy of the report here (PDF) or from http://is.gd/4Zk6s.