A social service provider is gutted that funding for the Government’s boot camp pilot is not going directly into community organisations.
The overall cost of the 12-month pilot Youth Academy Programme is $5 million and RNZ revealed yesterday this included a cost of up to $100,000 per teenager for the “intensive mentor” role.
Ko Wai Au is a non-for-profit charitable trust in Te Awamutu, set up in March last year. They offer two services, including a mentor and advocacy service for rangatahi between 15 and 24, considered “high-risk”, and typically not engaged in education, training or employment.
Christie said that in the time, they have been operating they have worked with 22 rangatahi who had previously been offending.
“They’ve been referred to us through police or Youth Justice, majority have come through Youth Justice.
“Out of that 22, we’ve only had three re-offend. Two technically hadn’t actually engaged in our service. We had received their referral, but we hadn’t started to work with them.
“So our mentors and our service, I’m a full believer that what we are doing is working.”
The children’s minister was not available to comment on Wednesday but has previously said that participants will follow a specially created curriculum and syllabus, with daily activities to support their health, learning and wellbeing.
“The key difference from what we’ve done before in these types of programmes is that the majority of time will be spent focusing on transition back to the community, making sure the teenagers are well set up for the future including a pathway into education, training or employment.”
Christie was frustrated to hear the Government say it was trying something new, when there were many NGOs trying new initiatives already, but did not have the backing.
“To hear particular people and the Government constantly say we need to look at something new, well, in my eyes, it’s not new. We’ve tried it before, we’ve been there, we’ve done that.
Burnham Military Camp near Christchurch, 2010. Photo / Simon Baker
“There are many amazing NGOs out there that are doing a lot of new initiatives, but they don’t have the backing.”
Christie said if she had an extra kaimahi funded with $100,000 a year, that would enable the trust to work with an extra 20 or 30 rangatahi a year.
It currently budgeted for $12,000 per rangatahi, including overheads and HR costs.
“It’s a real shame that us who are already providing these services, getting the awesome outcomes, haven’t had much of a say.
“And where has the rangatahi voice been in all this? We spent five years going out and talking to the rangatahi of our community, asking them, if there was a service, what would that look like to you. What do you need? So where has that been? Where is the rangatahi voice in the setup of this initiative?”
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo / Jason Dorday
“We want to try something different. We’ve got a pilot going on with 10 young people. We’ll kick it off this month. As soon as we start to learn what’s working, what’s not working, we’ll tweak it as we go. But the bottom line is, I’m sorry, we are going to do something different, because what we’re doing isn’t working.”
But the Labour Party said the government boot camps were an “expensive experiment”.
Labour’s spokesperson for children Willow-Jean Prime said this funding could be put into programmes that have already been proven a success, and the $5m for an experimental pilot on only 10 rangatahi could be better spent.
“This is an expensive experiment of a military style academy of boot camps that this government is pursuing.
“I believe that that funding should be put into Youth Justice, and that these are the sorts of things that all our rangatahi who are in Youth Justice deserve. They deserve mentors as part of being in Youth Justice, not just being sent to a boot camp.”
The previous government introduced a “circuit breaker” response to young people who were reoffending, with the intention of creating an urgent plan for a child to help stop them reoffending again.
Prime said this was having a 76% success rate.
“To claim that something isn’t working and they have to try something different and their proposed different is failed boot camps of the past, I argue that this is a waste of taxpayers money.
“They need to stop the nonsense, stop the rhetoric of tough on crime and boot camps and fund what they know is working.”
