State to provide refuges for youth

Steve Maharey

The state has stepped in to provide temporary beds for youngsters picked up on the streets of Manukau with no safe families to go home to.

Child, Youth and Family Services (CYFS) will contract social service agencies to open three homes for youngsters, each housing six to eight for up to a week.

One will open early next year for boys aged 13 to 16 facing charges which are too minor to put them into a youth justice residence.

One will open later next year for teenage girls in the same age group, including school-aged prostitutes.

The third home, also opening later next year, will be for children as young as 10 who are picked up by police during the night and now have to be "baby-sat" at police stations.

Counties-Manukau policing development manager Senior Sergeant Jason Hewett gave the example of a drunk 12-year-old boy he picked up last weekend well after midnight.

"We take them home, but the parents' home is not suitable. They have nowhere to go," he said.

CYFS regional manager Marion Heeney said the three new "reception centres" would not lock youngsters in as youth justice centres do.

"They are smaller, locally based, like family homes."

But she said they would still need resource consents from the Manukau City Council. CYFS has identified three possible sites.

The three new homes are part of a $10 million, 26-point "action plan" for Manukau youth unveiled yesterday by Social Development Minister David Benson-Pope and Education Minister Steve Maharey.

The plan, sparked by youth gang violence in the city over the past year, also includes "social and youth assessments" for children in their first year in decile 1 and 2 Manukau high schools, representing the poorest fifth of the national population.

Education Ministry regional manager Bruce Adin said these assessments had proved valuable in eight local high schools in the "AimHi" group of decile 1 schools and would now be extended to decile 2.

Health clinics and social workers at the eight schools refer students to other services for health issues such as hearing loss, and to social agencies where their families need help.

Mr Benson-Pope has also announced a $7 million package of measures for at-risk families nationally, including seven "early years service hubs" with services ranging from ante-natal education to parenting support in the country's neediest pockets.

Eight needy areas, likely to overlap with the areas targeted for early years hubs, will get co-ordinators to work with teenage parents.

There will also be a $321,000, three-year trial in 10 Auckland schools of the Canadian "Roots of Empathy" scheme, which brings babies and their mothers into primary school classrooms once a month for a year to help children empathise with others.

Schools will be selected in the next few months.


MANUKAU YOUTH PLAN

* Three state homes for youngsters picked up on the streets.

* Eight youth workers in Otara, six in Mangere, three each in Otahuhu and Manurewa and two in Papatoetoe.

* Other youth workers to work with police stations to find beds or transport home for youngsters picked up on the streets at night.

* Four co-ordinators to get "wrap-around" support from multiple agencies for 100 most at-risk youngsters and their families.

* A new scheme for voluntary Pacific Island wardens, similar to Maori wardens, to be trialled in Auckland City after Pacific leaders in Manukau apparently proved cool on the idea.

* Health and social assessments of Year 9 students at all Manukau high schools in the poorest fifth of the national population.

* Dedicated drug and alcohol treatment services for young people in Manukau