Life Begins At.....
Issue link: http://ebook.aprs.com.au/i/47118
CELEBRITY FEATURE Paul who auspiced me for the fi rst couple of years, but they felt very uncomfortable with me because I was working with kids who were still prostituting, were still heavy drug users or would be stealing cars, and they were very uncomfortable working with that client group. When I started in 1991, there were three youth services staff members, the other two had fallen by the wayside within 12 months, but I was tenacious because this was my life's journey. So I said to them, "Look I know you're really uncomfortable with youth programs, can you just let me start my own organisation and ensure I get the funding for that one service." So they agreed to do that and then Rotary took on the fi rst Board and set up Youth Off The Streets. What's a typical day for you involve? We're growing at alarming rates really and we only get 35 per cent government funding, whereas most other charitable organisations would get 90 to 100 per cent. So I'm really outspoken, I have to be, and I move very quickly which most governments can't deal with. There was a problem at Bankstown recently where a young 15 year old was stabbed, and we set up a service there within three weeks. My normal days up until a year or so ago involved sitting on a lot of committees advising governments and those sorts of things, and I refl ected on that and thought I couldn't really contribute much to that. I think a lot of people would just use the name, and not take a lot of notice. So I've given a lot of that stuff up and gone back to teaching HSC [Year 12] which I love, just seeing kids achieve at Year 11 and 12 level is exciting for me. Also, wherever we go somewhere new, I spearhead that. So for instance with our new outreach in Bankstown, the police warned us that it was too dangerous to operate in the area after dark, so I won't send any of my trainees there without me being there. I tend to get involved with the grassroots stuff. I have also taken back a lot of line management so I actually know what's going on in my organisation. I'm in charge of the outreaches from south-west Sydney right through to Cessnock. I try and get out there in the fi eld as much as I can and that's where I feel most useful and most at home. Besides homelessness, what other issues are young children on the streets grappling with today? The biggest issue in our country I believe is the sexual assault of kids, and it's just amazing that we as a nation don't want to fi x that. The latest statistics in New South Wales were 6,042 people charged with sexual assault and 55 per cent of those cases involved children under the age of 15, 10 per cent were aged zero to four, and I think around 25 per cent were aged fi ve to nine years old. It's an epidemic in the country and yet we won't discuss it. At the 2020 Summit in 2009 Professor Freda Briggs and I threw up our hands saying, "Can we please discuss sexual assault?" And we were yelled at by a moderator who said, "We will not put those words up on the board." There are millions of people out there who have been abused and are still being abused, and we don't as a country have a will to fi x that. If you had the chance to challenge the government on this issue, what would you call for from them? I would call for resources to go into young people's programs. One of the most ironic complements I got from the Reader's Digest over the last couple of years, is I was voted the country's eighth most trusted person. The reason for that was bizarre though, it was because I speak out for youth in a country that has basically turned its back on its youth. We've got no youth-friendly infrastructure. If you look at our Blacktown program, one of the largest suburbs in the whole country, 27 per cent of the population is under 18 years of age and it has the highest crime rate in almost every area, because we don't have infrastructure there for these kids. Two hundred different communities live in that suburb, so I just think if we put youth centres in, that would change the whole culture. Macquarie Fields is going to be the fi rst – it has taken me six years to get the council to approve a youth centre there which will open on the 1st of December. It has the capacity to operate 24 hours a day and it was a $7.5 million project, so it's a massive building where 200 kids can run and play, and also have a place to escape to if they're being hurt at night. It's about holding kids in a community and saying to the government, "Invest in kids for God's sake. You've wasted so much damn money everywhere." THE RETIREE SUMMER 9