A peak body for young people "youth action" has found 87 per cent of 15- to 24-year-olds see loneliness as a major issue and most of them think having more safe and inclusive spaces could be an effective solution.
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00:00It is. And I think that's why we very much welcome that there's an inquiry in the New
00:08South Wales Parliament on the Standing Committee on Social Issues. And there's been leadership
00:13in the government here in New South Wales with Minister Jackson and others. So you can
00:18see we're glad as the youth peak that they're taking it up, given that so many young people
00:23see it as a significant issue for them.
00:25What do you think this is a result of?
00:27I think we asked them what the solutions were and we would always say, if you want a solution,
00:31go and ask young people themselves. And as you outlined, what young people are saying,
00:36we needed more safe and inclusive spaces. And what they're meaning is they're needing
00:40somewhere to go to kind of decompress, but more importantly, to get someone to assist
00:45them to connect into services to get the supports that they need. Because you're often, the
00:50youth sector often gets forgotten that they're at the top of the cliff and the bottom of
00:54the cliff. So you're getting young people interacting with out-of-home care, interacting
00:59with homelessness services, interacting with conflict with the law, many multi-system issues
01:05and they just need somewhere so they can navigate to get the real supports that they need.
01:11And was this a really kind of a broad range of young people you spoke to, like across
01:15the socio-economic range?
01:17Yes. So this was youth actions out and about doing lots of face-to-face engagement. But
01:22we also like to do, this is a representative sample poll of a thousand young people across
01:27New South Wales.
01:28And so at the risk of being accused of being a boomer, I'll ask this question anyway. Just
01:32talking in terms of causes of loneliness, does social media and kind of the age that
01:41we're in, is there a feeling at all that that has actually added to a sense of disconnectedness
01:48or do a lot of them still champion that as a means of actually connecting with people?
01:54You know, certainly I think young people when you ask them themselves can see the benefits
01:58and minuses of social media, but it is a way that they connect. But we so often have prejudices
02:03placed on young people and young people tell us all the time, we want more opportunities
02:07to connect with each other face-to-face, which is why their recommendation on youth hubs
02:14is so important.
02:15So what are youth hubs and what is the evidence that they've actually been pretty effective?
02:19Well, first and foremost, the evidence is it's what the youth sector has been doing
02:24since day dot. So it's enabling young people a place to decompress and then to have someone
02:30to walk alongside them. We did a major study looking at 10 different organisations and
02:34we asked young people, what is it that you want? And they said, we find the systems confusing.
02:39We need someone to walk alongside me, not tell me, but help me with finding the solutions.
02:44And we know the results that the youth sector is getting when they're able to get resourced
02:50and those results are extraordinary.
02:52So can you tell us about, give us an example of one of these youth hubs and how it works
02:56and what it does?
02:57Yes. So, I mean, there's many different versions of the youth hub. What's very important is
03:01in rural areas or regional Australia is that often young people say there's nowhere for
03:07me to go after school. And so where do you connect with young people? As I talked before,
03:13what happens if you're a young person suffering trauma, you're a victim survivor of violence,
03:19experiencing homelessness, where do you go? That's a lot to deal with in one go. So one
03:23of the places is A, for them to just feel supported and safe. And then it's sometimes
03:30the word caseworker. We ask young people what that term should be, would individualised
03:34support worker. And then a worker, which is the raison d'etre of the youth sector, is
03:39to sit down with that young person at their speed to help them connect into what they need.
03:44And another solution that this survey came across was more support for early intervention
03:50programs. What's the evidence of some of those programs working and can you talk to any of those?
03:56Yeah. And with the programs in early intervention, we know that they're working. We would say
04:01we know from our sector. So we're often meeting with those people on the ground. Youth Action
04:07meets with, not so long ago, about 60 people doing work on the ground. It's just unmet
04:12demand. And so what we know in early intervention, young people have told us that if I can get
04:20support into where do I call for housing? If I'm unemployed, where do I go to get connected
04:25into Centrelink? All of that's very confusing. So extraordinary stories about young people
04:30through a support worker or a youth worker got their life back on track. So they could
04:35have been experiencing homelessness. They could have been nearly in conflict with the
04:39law and so many stories from the youth sector about a young person being able to get back
04:45on track in stable, safe housing and getting back into study. So it's really about assisting
04:51young people with what they need, but listening to them first.