As part of Nundah Festival on the 8th of September CLA is running a fundraiser to support two programs facilitated by CLA. The programs are the Young People’s Home Share Project and the Strong Families Project of which information can be found on CLA’s Website at http://www.communityliving.org.au/. The fundraiser is a pet photo competition with a number of categories and prizes for the winning photos! I have attached a poster with the competition information as well as a registration form and the terms and conditions.

The Sydney Institute of Criminology at the University of Sydney (along with researchers from the University of NSW and the University of Western Sydney) are researching sexting among young people. This is through an Australian Criminology Research Grant and the NSW Commission for Children and Young People are also involved. 

Young people who engage in sexting could face the risk of being prosecuted for serious offences. Our research is seeking the real story behind sexting. Fill in our anonymous online survey for young Australians. It only takes 10-20 minutes and is an opportunity for Australian teens (aged 13-18) to share their views on sexting.

Complete the survey and spread the word! The survey will be open until the end of September 2013 and can be found here: www.surveymonkey.com/s/SICSX

Commissioner Tim Carmody recently released  ‘Taking Responsibility: A Roadmap for Queensland Child Protection’. 

The Queensland Government is currently considering its response to the report recommendations. To ensure young people are kept informed throughout this process and given the opportunity to provide input, The CREATE Foundation has developed a brief document outlining some of the key issues that may be relevant to children and young people in care. The document also highlights avenues for young people to express their opinion on the proposed changes. 

Please share this document with as many children and young people as possible. It may be deemed more appropriate in some instances for a support person to read through the document with the child or young person.

Click here to read the CREATE document

(Souce: Peakcare enews 1st August 2013)

As the collective voice of the state's youth sector, the Youth Affairs Network of Queensland (YANQ) demands that the Queensland Government cease removing funding from youth services that play such an important role in the life of both young people and the broader Queensland community.

In recent times, we have seen a tidal wave of destruction break over the youth sector, with serious consequences for young people - particularly those living in rural areas with limited access to services, and disadvantaged young people throughout Queensland. Many highly successful youth programs have been defunded over the past 15 months. Those remaining, many of whom were already operating on shoestring budgets, have faced funding cuts. Coupled with cuts to frontline services more widely, this has put a great strain on youth services and reduced their capacity to respond to the growing demand for services by young people themselves and other service providers. As the sector's peak body, it is YANQ's responsibility to strongly resist the negative ramifications of these processes.

Small and medium size youth services have generally built strong connections to the local and regional communities they are part of, over many years. These services deserve acknowledgment and support from the Government for the tremendous work they do within such limited resources.

The Queensland Government has an opportunity to build on the work of...

Senator for Queensland, Jan McLucas, urges youth organisations in North Queensland to take advantage of a program to help stamp out bullying and youth violence. The Federal Labor Government is targeting school and cyber-bullying with grants of up to $70,000 through the annual Youth Development and Support Program.

Applications are open until 23 August 2013. For information on the program and how to apply, visit http://www.youth.gov.au/sites/youth/news/pages/ydsprogram_010410

(Source: Email from Senator McLucas on 5/8/13)

 The Queensland Government Office for Early Childhood Education and Care is implementing a range of strategies to support awareness and use of Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) data across Queensland, including the Queensland AEDI Community Action Grant Program.

Grants from $5,000 to $20,000 are available to support organisations to respond to AEDI data in communities with higher proportions of vulnerable children than the Queensland average. Activities funded under this grant should prioritise raising awareness of issues relevant to early childhood development, engaging with community members in identifying issues and delivering solutions or enhancing the capacity of the community to support early childhood development.  

Applications are now being sought from eligible organisations, with activities to be delivered between September 2013 and March 2014. Applications close 9 August 2013.

For more information on the grants as well as the application form, please visit http: //deta.qld.gov.au/earlychildhood/service/grants/index.html

The Queensland Children's Commission has released its latest report – the Views of Children and Young People in Foster Care Survey: Education – which presents findings from our fourth survey of children and young people living in foster care in Queensland.

The report is the third in a series of reports detailing selected findings from the 2011 Views of Children and Young People in Foster Care Survey. It focuses on the educational experiences of children and young people in care and the findings provide an important insight into children and young people’s attitudes towards, and perceptions of, their own education.

Pleasingly, the findings suggest that, overwhelmingly, children and young people in care are positively engaged with the education system. Overall, they are telling us that they enjoy school, are aspiring and expecting to complete Year 12, and that their teachers are generally happy with their schoolwork. Other encouraging findings include an increase over the years in the proportion of children and young people reporting that they have Education Support Plans and, importantly, that these plans are helpful.

Along with these findings, however, the report reveals that children and young people in care continue to experience educational disadvantage. They have high rates of school changes, suspensions and exclusions, and a range of other problems at school including with bullying, schoolwork, teachers and their own behaviour. It also shows that these difficulties are often exacerbated by the child protection system. For example, young people who have had more placement and school changes are more likely to have been suspended or excluded from school.

While the report shows that educational disadvantage for children and young people in care is an enduring issue, there are clear signs of progress and significant opportunities to build on into the future, including the considerable enthusiasm children and young people in care have for school.

Source: Email from the Children's Commission 1/8/13

The new manager of Sine Cera Rainforest Retreat in Cougal, in the Northern Rivers area of NSW, has contacted YANQ and wants to put the word out that the venue is suitable to conduct everything from short term programs to training, workshops and organisational retreats, to longer term live-in youth programs.

"We take group bookings only and are able to sleep very comfortably, up 100 people, have 200 acres of stunning sub- tropical rainforest are not for profit and therefore priced very affordably. We are auspiced by Morningside C.A.R.E. which also owns Georgina Hostel which is an ATSI Aged Care facility in Brisbane and conducts ICDP (International Children’s Development Program).

Applicants for the funding grant Youth Development & Support Program for example;  Should you require or even become aware of the need for such accommodation as ours, please let me know as The Board of Directors and myself are keen to see the property used either short or long term by youth organisations or programs.

Please take a just a moment to look at our website, listed below, together with my contact details.

Lyndal Hose
Manager
6 Main Creek Road
Cougal NSW 2474
www.sinecera.org.au
02 6636 6176
0401 615 240"

The sometimes-controversial practice of Income Management by the Federal Government has been extended to include some young people receiving government benefits.

Young people can now be placed on Income Management if they are judged by a Centrelink social worker to be vulnerable or at risk (using the Vulnerable Welfare Payment Recipient measure – see the FaHCSIA website below for more on this). If this happens, then 50% of their income support and family assistance payments will be income-managed and available to be spent only in certain outlets. The change came into effect on 1 July 2013.

Income Management, which has been operating in the Northern Territory for some time, is now being extended to some young people in the following areas: Bankstown (NSW), Playford and APY Lands (SA), Greater Shepparton (VIC), and Logan and Rockhampton (QLD).

Some community sector organisations have already expressed concern that these changes are inflexible and do not take into account the actual needs of the young people concerned. Furthermore, they say that there is very little evidence to suggest that such schemes have positive outcomes for the people whose income is being managed.

Further details about Income Management are available on the FaHCSIA website.

For an article by the Victorian Council of Social Service, see: http://vcoss.org.au/blog/income-management-now-targeting-vulnerable-young-people/

(Source: Youth Field Xpress July 2013)

An annual survey by the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) has found that youth services are among those services experiencing the highest demand in the community sector.

The ACOSS Australian community sector survey 2013 findings use data from a survey conducted earlier this year that cover the period of the financial year 1 July 2011 to 30 June 2012. More than 530 organisations took part in the survey, which paints a damning picture of a community service sector struggling to cope with ever-increasing demands.

Youth services were listed among the top three categories that were unable to meet demand among its own client group, and with the second-highest turn-away rate of 17% across all groups surveyed. The section on youth services in this report (see p. 36 of the report) draws on the results of the recent Australian Youth Affairs Coalition (AYAC) survey of youth workers, which listed the issues of most concern to young people as: education, mental health, behaviour management, income support, drugs, housing, and alcohol issues. (See the item about the AYAC survey under ‘Youth work’ in this issue of YFX.)

Dr Tessa Boyd-Caine, ACOSS Deputy CEO, said that urgent action was needed to ‘address these issues, along with a plan to increase the abysmally low income support allowances payments like Newstart’.

Talking on the ABC’s The World Today program, Ray Reodica, Acting Executive Director of AYAC, said that young people on Youth Allowance are having to live on $29 a day ‘so these are the young people who are going to services to try and get that additional support and help them through this situation’.

Read more from ACOSS: http://acoss.org.au/media/release/australias_community_services_unable_to_meet_growing_demand and download the report: http://acoss.org.au/papers/australian_community_sector_survey_20131 And see or listen to The World Today at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-01/welfare-providers-unable-to-meet-growing-demand/4791734?section=business

(Source: Youth Field Xpress Ju;y 2013)