|
I am now back on deck and am fully recovered from my surgery. My thanks again for all the support and understanding my staff and I have been given over the past few weeks.
Child, Youth and Family Minister Ruth Dyson has announced a package of initiatives to bolster and improve residential services for young people.
The package includes the piloting of an innovative supported bail programme and undertaking preliminary work on a possible new youth justice residence.
Child, Youth and Family will also
- Develop a therapeutic approach and tailored programmes to improve results for children and young people in its youth justice and care and protection residences
- Increase family/whanau involvement in a young person's stay in residences
- Improve the support for children and young people to transition from residences back to their families/whanau or caregivers and communities
The initiatives are included in Child, Youth and Family's 2003 Residential Services Strategy, which has now been signed off by the Government.
The strategy aims to improve outcomes for all young people in Child, Youth and Family's youth justice and care and protection residences and to ease pressure on existing youth justice residence beds.
The work builds on the 1996 Residential Services Strategy, which saw a new 46-bed youth justice residence open in Auckland in January and the start of work of on the new youth justice residence in Christchurch. The 1996 strategy also included redeveloping the existing care and protection residences at Christchurch and Auckland. These developments will see an overall increase of 27 youth justice beds and 13 care and protection beds.
But easing pressure on residences is not just about having more beds. We need to look at initiatives that support young people in the community, to reduce the need for residential placements and to take a therapeutic approach with people who are in residences to better prepare them for their discharge back into the community with the aim of reducing the likelihood of reoffending.
This strategy addresses that need.
The Minister has also announced a targeted bail programme offering better support for young people while on bail.
The pilot programme will provide intensive community-based support and services, such as activity-based day programmes, for young people on remand for alleged offending and will also help families to improve the supervision and monitoring of young people.
The Government has approved $3.037 million over three years for the pilot, which will focus on young people who are at high risk of breaching their bail conditions and being remanded into a custodial facility.
Judges are often faced with having to remand young people to residences because of a lack of support for them in the community. The supported bail pilot will provide a credible alternative.
A similar programme has been operating in Queensland with favourable results. It means young people can be placed back into a structured positive social activity programme coupled with supports and services to assist their families to better manage their behaviour and monitor their activities.
The pilot is part of a shift by Child, Youth and Family towards rehabilitation and support for remanded young people and their families, rather than containment.
It is important that the community has confidence that young people will be held accountable for their actions. What it means is that some young people on bail will be more actively monitored, supervised and deliberately engaged in meaningful activity than is currently the case.
Child, Youth and Family will finalise the details for the pilot and identifying providers over the next six months.
The pilot starts in January 2005 and will involve four providers in the first year (delivering services to 60 young people on remand) increasing to six providers in the 2006 and 2007 (delivering services to 120 young people on remand each year).
A full evaluation will be carried out, with a report-back to government Ministers on the scheme's effectiveness in December 2006.
The government is taking further steps to deliver high quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education for every child in the country, through a public consultation process on proposed new policy.
Over the next six weeks early childhood education services and communities will be consulted about the best way to deliver the key quality improvements contained in the 10-year early childhood education strategy, Pathways to the Future: Ngä Huarahi Arataki.
The consultation will seek feedback on matters such as:
- What the improved adult:child ratios will be.
- How teacher registration targets will be regulated.
- Progressively improving adult: child ratios and reducing group size.
- Legislating Te Whäriki as the curriculum for all early childhood education services.
The consultation document also proposes a new framework for regulation that is more streamlined and transparent than the current system. This should reduce the compliance costs of early childhood regulation, while ensuring that the current standards are maintained.
The consultation document - Review of Regulation of Early Childhood Education - and details of the consultation meeting dates and venues are available on www.minedu.govt.nz/goto/ecereviews.
The first consultation meetings will start in mid-June, and submissions close on July 23.
|
|
|
