CREATE TAS election priorities 2024

1. Implement all 191 recommendation from the Commission of Inquiry, and all recommendations from the Commissioner for Children and Young People’s inquiries including ‘A Place at the Table’ and ‘Somebody in Your Corner’.
   
   This should include a commitment to implement these in full over the next 2-3 years and be accompanied by public reporting on outcomes. Speeding up this process will show a firm commitment to change and ensure that young people in care are safe, well and supported to raise their voices and concerns.
   
   There is too much at stake not to act on these recommendations.

Currently, young people leaving care are offered a limited and optional package of support through the Transition to Independence Program (T2i) and After Care Support Program. The maximum amount of flexible funding offered through the After Care Support Program is capped at $2,500 per year, compared to Queensland and Victoria’s financial support, for example, which offers $16,000 per year.

It’s also only available to young people who have been in care for two years or more from the age of 14 years and for a limited number of reasons (see Tasmanian Government, 2023a). This allowance does not adequately support young people transitioning from care to cover basic living and housing expenses in the face of Tasmania’s cost of living and housing crises.

The Government must review the Transition to Independence Program and deliver the following:

1. Development of a comprehensive transition plan that assesses the young person’s individual need for support in all life domains, including support to maintain connection with family and culture, and the provision of some form of individual mentor (e.g., transition coach or personal advisor). Planning should actively involve young people in the decision-making process and begin at 15 years (at the latest). Where relevant, plans should be developed in consultation with Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations (ACCOs), to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Lander young people leaving care retain/develop connection to culture, kin, community and lands at their own pace (Cameron et al., 2019). Development of the plan should also consider warm referrals for young people to relevant support workers (e.g., Housing Connect). Planning should also consider the need for social housing applications that may involve caseworkers applying on behalf of young people from as early as 16 years, to account for waitlist times.
2. A specific ‘Independent Living Allowance’ is offered to all young people leaving care of $16,000 per year up to the age of 25 to better support their transition from the care system, and that helps them to cover the true costs of independent living. This allowance should be opt-out rather than opt-in to ensure young people do not miss out on the support available and to reduce the administrative burden of processing applications. Further, the new Government should systematically review this allowance to appropriately index this payment to account for increases to the cost of living.
3. A specialist mix of housing supports to be provided to young people leaving care as part of a broader commitment to provide guaranteed housing placements for young people with a care experience up to the age of 25. This should include:
   • Rental subsidy that is targeted for young people leaving care up to age 25 to help them enter the private rental market and maintain their tenancies.
   • Scaling the existing Youth2Independence (Y2I) program to support young people leaving care as a priority cohort. This model is well-suited to young people leaving care and can deliver stable accommodation and community-based, multi-disciplinary support to ensure young people’s social and economic participation and improved life outcomes. These better outcomes for individuals also reflect avoided costs to the Tasmanian Government across numerous portfolios, including health, justice, housing, and social services.
   • Extended home-based care placements, where appropriate for young people. This would need to be complemented by an expansion of the Extended Carer Payment (provided to carers until the young person turns 25) and amendment of the Children, Young Persons and Their Families Act 1997 (which currently dictates that such payments lapse at 18).
4. A review of the After Care Support Program with a view to remove the exclusionary criteria requiring young people to have been in care for two years or more from the age of 14 years to be eligible for the flexible funding currently offered.
5. The new Government should prioritise and fund Aboriginal-led service provision to ensure culturally safe and appropriate support is provided to Aboriginal and Torres Islander young people leaving care.

The Government must:

1. Immediately cease the use of adult prisons as a ‘front door’ to the youth justice system where children are held while awaiting interview, bail, court proceedings or transferred to youth detention. This must be accompanied by urgent improvements to the treatment of children and young people in youth justice systems. This should include enhancing trauma-informed training for youth justice workers and police officers. A trauma-informed model includes explaining judicial processes and terminology in a developmentally appropriate manner, clearly articulating what is expected of the young person, and ensuring that justice system authorities are trained to correctly identify and respond to trauma-related behaviours.
2. Accelerate efforts to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14 years without exceptions and the minimum age of detention to 16 years over the first year of the new Government’s term.
3. Where detention is considered to be necessary for children over the age of 16, it must occur in a fit-for-purpose youth detention centre, specifically designed to cater to the needs of children and young people. Such centres should adopt a rehabilitative approach that is evidenced-based and provides targeted, trauma-informed, and culturally safe therapeutic support to address patterns of contact with the youth justice system, especially for children and young people with a care experience.
4. Prioritise early intervention and assess the support gaps, drivers and protective factors for children and young people at risk of contact with the youth justice system. Any assessment should consider the extent to which additional family support is needed, engagement in education or skilling training that meet the capabilities and interests of the child, health (including mental health) outcomes, housing and financial drivers that may influence decisions to engage in offending behaviours. And they must include culturally informed and safe practice when working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.
5. A comprehensive review of instances where police cautions and/or referrals to support services were not utilised for children and young people. This will increase transparency around the use of these diversionary measures. The review should also seek to better understand referral pathways to support services and any barriers to their use.

Significant investment should be re-directed to Aboriginal Community-Controlled Organisations and peak bodies to adequately resource the Aboriginal sector, advance self-determination and support implementation of Aboriginal-led reforms to address overrepresentation in both the child protection and youth justice systems. Taking this step is critical in light of the concerns raised by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre about the lack of progress in implementing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle in the recent Family Matters Report (SNAICC, 2023). We urge the new Government to genuinely hand over decision-making and resources to the Aboriginal sector to enable Aboriginal-led and self-determined approaches to keeping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children safe, well and connected to culture.

In the spirit of self-determination and honouring Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and caring for children, the Government must:

1. Appropriately resource ACCOs and Aboriginal peak bodies to support self-determined approaches to keeping Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children safe, well and connected to culture as part of reform efforts. This should be the centerpiece of a broader commitment to fully embedding and implementing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle.

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2022). Young people under youth justice supervision and their interaction with the child protection system 2020–21. Canberra: AIHW. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/youth-justice/young-people-under-youth-justice-supervision/data

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2023). Child protection Australia 2021–22. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/child-protection/child-protection-australia-2021-22

Australian Catholic University. (2022). Take Notice, Believe Us and Act! Exploring the safety of children and young people in government run organisations: A report for the Tasmanian Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s responses to child sexual abuse in institutional setting. https://www.commissionofinquiry.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/702186/Take-notice,-believe-us-and-act!_UPD.pdf

Cameron, N., McPherson, L., Gatwiri, K., & Parmenter, N. (2019). Good practice in supporting young people leaving care. https://bettercarenetwork.org/library/principles-of-good-care-practices/transitioning-from-care/good-practice-in-supporting-young-people-leaving-care

Commissioner for Children and Young People Tasmania. (2023). A Place at the Table: An investigation into a change to the case management of children and young people in care in Tasmania. https://childcomm.tas.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Investigation-Report.pdf

Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. (2023). Final Report: Volume 1 Summary, recommendations and findings. Report, August 2023. https://www.commissionofinquiry.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/725695/COI_Volume-1_SummaryRecommendationsAndFindings.pdf 

CREATE Foundation. (2023a). CREATE Youth Advisory Group: The views and experiences of young people with an out-of-home care experience in Tasmania on the Commissioner for Children’s and Young People Tasmania’s ‘A place at the table’. December 2023. Unpublished.

CREATE Foundation. (2023b). CREATE Youth Advisory Group: The views and experiences of young people with an out-of-home care experience in Tasmania on CREATE’s Advocacy Priorities in Tasmania. November 2023. Unpublished.

CREATE Foundation. (2023c). CREATE Youth Advisory Group: The views and experiences of young people with an out-of-home care experience in Tasmania on Transition to Independence. June 2023. Unpublished.

McDowall, J. J. (2020). Transitioning to Adulthood from Out-of-Home Care: Independence or Interdependence? CREATE Foundation. https://create.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/CREATE-Post-Care-Report-2021-LR.pdf

McFarlane, K., Colvin, E., McGrath, A., & Gerard, A. (2018). “Just another policy document?” Can a protocol end the criminalisation of kids in care? Alternative Law Journal, 44(1), 37–42.

Mendes, P., Johnson, G., & Moslehuddin, B. (2011). Young people leaving state out-of-home care: Australian policy and practice. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.

SNAICC (2023). Family Matters Report, SNAICC. https://www.snaicc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Family-Matters-Report-2023.pdf