Palmerston North City Council seeks to address youth crime: Orphee Mickalad

Palmerston North city councillor Orphee Mickalad says there are gaps in services available to support young people. Photo / Kevin Bills Media

Orphee Mickalad is a Palmerston North city councillor.

OPINION

As Philippine nationalist and writer Jose Rizal famously put it, youth are the hope of our future. It follows that the city council has an important role to play in creating better pathways for our young people.

Palmerston North, like many other cities around New Zealand, has experienced an increase in antisocial behaviour involving young people.

On November 22, the council referred the adoption of a Youth Wellbeing Action Plan to deliberations on the long-term plan (LTP).

Elected members also requested council officers facilitate a youth wellbeing forum and complete a sector-wide scan of youth-focused programmes and initiatives within the city, as well as identify any strategic or service gaps that can be used to inform the development of the action plan.

The forum, held last month, sought to understand the challenges, gaps and aspirations of the youth sector, and allowed officers and elected members to understand how the council can better support the youth sector to proactively respond to trends and issues that arise.

Against this backdrop, a report presented to the council on May 1 identified challenges experienced by young people. These include education, health, employment, safety, relationships and exposure to family violence.

The report also identified gaps in services available to support young people. It noted some of the services young people wanted but could not find included safe places for various age groups, programmes or initiatives for those not in education, employment and training, and the need for more role models and mentors, especially outside of school.

This prompted the council to propose a $100,000 budget to strengthen the council’s internal youth services provision, and strengthen support for the youth sector.

The council already contributes directly and indirectly to wellbeing outcomes for young people including through youth development initiatives such as the youth council, scholarships and grants, the city ambassadors programme, and outdoor amenities such as parks, sports fields, skateparks, bike trails and basketball courts. However, it is difficult to extract specific demographic investment across all council services.

Palmerston North has about 20,280 residents aged 10 to 24. This equates to 22.1 per cent of the city’s population and is higher than the national average of 19.2 per cent.

The proposed funding will seek to address some of the root causes driving youth crime and inactivity in the city, maximise opportunities for positive engagement and contribution, and support groups of young people who are experiencing higher rates of marginalisation and inequity: rangatahi Māori, Pacific young people, disabled young people, young women and young people from ethnic communities (in particular former refugees and migrants).

While accountability for young people is a shared responsibility across all government levels, as city councillors we have a social responsibility under the Local Government Act to ensure our young people are supported and enabled to lead productive and fulfilling lives.