A project to increase service access for young people from a refugee background
from YAPRap August 2004
by Janet Irvine, STARTTS
The concept of a ‘service’ is often an unfamiliar one for young people from a refugee background. Many young people have arrived from war-torn countries where a welfare system does not exist or is extremely depleted. Consequently when they arrive in Australia there is a lot to get their head around. Not only do they have to figure out how to go to school and all that entails but they are also faced with re-establishing their lives and building a new future. There is so much to learn about in a new country and finding the relevant information can be hard when you don’t have any idea where to start.
As service providers, and as people who know how to negotiate the system, it is our responsibility to find the young people rather than waiting for them to find us. So where do we start?
Nearly all young people from a refugee background, who are of high school age, will initially attend an Intensive English Centre (IEC). These centres are located within 15 NSW high schools, mostly in metropolitan Sydney. Students generally attend these IECs from 6-12 months. This can present service providers with a great window of opportunity for accessing new arrivals.
LiNCS is one project that seizes this opportunity. In 2002 the project was piloted at Holroyd High IEC. Since then it has been run 5 more times and has been replicated at Fairfield IEC this year. The student program generally involves classes of students going on weekly excursions over 10 weeks to different services in their community. Services visited have included council, youth health and other health related services, youth drop-in and generalist services, Centrelink, Migrant Resource Centres, JPET, TAFE, PCYC and finishing with ten pin bowling. Each service is encouraged to develop a creative 30-minute presentation to give to the students. The presentation needs to take into account that students will have low English language levels and generally will have little knowledge of how the system works.
At the end of each program an evaluation is completed by students, service providers and teachers. To date the evaluations have supported the program's aims of increasing the awareness of young people about services available to them and increasing the access of young people by service providers. To illustrate I will give an example from the first group and some quotes from the evaluations.
On the first visit students went to the council library and students were shown how to become a member by filling out a form. The next week they attended a generalist youth service and a student asked ‘How do we become members?’. They learnt that at this service it was not necessary to join at all. The next week they attended another service and the students asked ‘How do we use this service? Do we have to become members or is there something else? This indicated that the students were gradually building knowledge around the concept of support services and access of those services.
Additionally, one student in their evaluation stated: “I’ve learned about the public places that can help us with everything and I know how to go there now.” Students were also encouraged to tell their friends and family about what they were learning. One student said “I got lots of information about different places. I also met lots of people and now I am able to give information [to] people about those places.”
For the service providers, many said it was an opportunity to increase their skills in communicating with young people from a refugee background. Lots of techniques were employed such as skits and keeping the presentation simple by basing it around an acronym. One service provider discovered the hard way that ‘youth speak’ was not a competency of new arrivals and was able to adjust their presentation for the future. Some service providers found whole classes wanting to make appointments on the spot. On one occasion JPET was able to organise a job seeking workshop specifically for those young people. Overall, service providers, students and teachers found the project valuable and wished to participate in further programs.
Whilst this is a very brief description of how the project has been run, hopefully it can provide food for thought for those wishing to address access and equity in relation to young people who are new arrivals in Australia.
more information
Janet Irvine
Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors (STARTTS)
(02) 9794 1908
Janet.Irvine@swsahs.nsw.gov.au or
www.startts.org
