Description of Service
Core Components
Core Objectives & Anticipated Outcomes
Description Of Service
The School Focused Youth Service is a joint initiative between the
Department of Education and Training (DE&T) and the Department
of Human Services (DHS) and complements the increase in support
provided to schools in response to the recommendations of the Suicide
Prevention Taskforce.
The focus of the initiative is the co-ordination of preventative
and early intervention strategies for young people, to be delivered
through school and community clusters. The School Focused Youth
Service is designed to support effective links
between the primary prevention work done by school-based support
services within the education sector and the early intervention
provided by the community sector. 41 school community clusters have
been established across the state to ensure that services are coordinated
and responsive to the needs of young people. The 41 service models
will be consistent around the state, each with a co-oordinator,
and brokerage capacity to respond to gaps in service
availability as identified by schools and community. The School Focused
Youth Service will link closely to schools and relevant community
agencies within each cluster.
The School Focused Youth Service is required to develop close linkages
with school support personnel located within Government Schools
as well as with Independent and Catholic schools, and community
agencies in contact with young people who are no longer connected
to the school system. Developing these linkages enables identification
of service gaps, development of strategies to respond to those gaps and the provision
of a continuum of service intervention.
Core Components
The core components of the School Focused Youth Service, are: The
establishment of linkages/coordination between youth services (in
schools and in the community) which are available to respond to the
needs of young people. This includes community mapping, development
of services, enhancement of effectiveness of existing services, provision
of information about service availability, and the establishment of
protocols between services and schools. The capacity to purchase services
as a result of identification, by the School Focused Youth Service,
of current gaps in service availability. This involves the purchase
of services through brokerage funds to address current gaps in service
availability as identified by the schools and community clusters.
Gaps will vary from cluster to cluster according to both the available
service mix and the needs for various service types. It should be
noted that these funds are limited and will generally be used to support
group programs or strategies, rather than individual students. They
are not meant to replace the provision of any existing services
Core Objectives And Anticipated Outcomes
The core objectives of the School Focused Youth Service are to:
establish collaborative structures and mechanisms between schools
and the relevant youth services and community services which support
young people, including welfare, health and mental health agencies;
provide linkages for agencies and schools which have a client base
of young people and which directly support young people; improve
linkages, cohesiveness and integration of service provision for
young people displaying 'at risk' behaviours who require support
and intervention; and · purchase services to meet gaps in
the current service system as identified at the local level.
The anticipated outcomes of the School Focused Youth Service are:
a significant improvement in addressing the needs of "at risk"
young people as a result of effective collaborative structures and
mechanisms between schools and relevant community agencies; a significant
enhancement of the current service system as a result of the identification
of gaps and subsequent service purchase.
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