Where do you start when it comes to addressing indigenous disadvantage; educational disadvantage, homelessness, chronic ill-health, drug and alcohol abuse?
Each of these problems presents its own challenges, yet we waste time, money and energy attacking the collective problem in a piecemeal fashion. What if there was a way of tackling them together, in a joint effort to ‘close the gap’?
Often when we see a problem, we immediately look for someone to blame.
Recently Cyclone Lam devastated large areas of Arnhem Land, resulting in much battered infrastructure in need of restoration. We can’t blame the cyclone itself. Instead, the fragmented way we approach the problem of addressing the needs of the locals is more the issue.
Recently, when I returned to Alice Springs, I was struck by the very evident crisis of homelessness. The front page of the Centralian Advocate on 24 February trumpeted: 'Empty Homes: Waiting list … over 600 with 114 dwellings vacant'. The 600 on the list can expect to wait six years for a three bedroom home.
Aimlessness is just as worrying. As I drive around the streets of Larapinta on a weekday morning, I see many children and youths strolling towards the Corner Store. It is obvious that they have nothing more meaningful to head for on a week day morning.
I am not the first person to observe these things. I know that there are numerous people in the town, both in the community services sector and in the government, who are aware of these problems.
I worked for many years in an organisation that provides housing, employment and ancillary services to Aboriginal people in the town and I know of the energy and effort made by these staff and by the good people in the Territory Housing Department. Yet the predicament remains and despite the policies of all governments and parties things have, from appearances, not improved.
Perhaps the key lies in the lack of work or engagement of so many Aboriginal people in purposeful, meaningful daily activity – be it employment, education or training – and the number of empty public dwellings in the same vicinity lends a clue to the deep malaise in the Centre.
Youth Plus is an extension of Edmund Rice Australia that was first established in Queensland. It opened St Joseph’s Flexible Learning Centre in Alice Springs three years ago. ‘Flexis’ are designed to re-connect disengaged students back to schooling. Across Australia, these students are regarded as the most at-risk cohort in various cities and regional centres.
The risks are juvenile delinquency, homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse and suicide ideation and attempts. In many Flexis, Aboriginal students make up a significant portion of the student body. In Alice Springs, Aboriginal teenagers comprise the whole student cohort apart from one solitary non-Indigenous student. These students are the children of many of the people I see walking the suburban streets of Alice. Thankfully St Joseph’s is now providing some of the meaning and purpose so lacking in the lives of many.
St Joseph’s employs a team of teachers and youth workers who as well as engaging students in a variety of interesting activities also collect and return students from their homes. Many of these students are often found in different locations each day. In a local form of ‘couch surfing’ they are footloose, frequently changing address as they access support from relatives dotted across the town.
Meanwhile NT Shelter’s latest report indicates that the homelessness in the Northern Territory, reported above at 750 out of every 100,000 (compared to a National figure of 49/100,00), is largely made up of ‘overcrowding’. It is this frequent accessing of unsupervised ‘shelter’ that is covered by the category of homelessness.
One of the consequences of this style of living is the lack of planning and sense of responsibility that accompanies it. With ‘care-giving’ provided by persons other than the child’s parent or official carer, young people easily develop a laissez faire attitude towards attendance at school and other important aspects of their personal lives.
While being ‘sent’ to school is not the only effective basis of a successful education it does provide an essential platform. Too many Indigenous students are deprived of the routine of family life that equips them for a day of educational striving. While sending these children to boarding schools in the metropolitan cities has been suggested as one solution to this problem, the downside of boarding is both home sickness and disassociation from family and culture for these already culturally challenged young Aboriginal people.
National organisations such as The Lighthouse Foundation, a Melbourne based not for profit agency providing support to homeless youth, provide the structure essential to establish stability and security, love and care in the lives of homeless youth.
If a linked approach like this were attempted, there could be no justification for blaming anyone. It’s not the problems themselves that are the challenge. It’s more the way we go about trying to solve them. We fail to think laterally and in an integrated way, and that’s why there’s so much grief.
Mike Bowden has worked as a teacher and community worker in Alice Springs and Aboriginal communities in the Top End.
Image: Cyber bulliying workshop at Youth Plus program.