Where hope is on the outerBy HELEN GRIMAUX
July 31, 2013, 4:36 p.m.
Permanent underclass status beckons for young people living in outer Melbourne as social infrastructure buckles under immense pressure. Helen Grimaux reports.
YOUNG people from Melbourne’s rapidly growing northern and western fringes do not live in one of the world’s most “liveable” cities.
These areas are the underbelly of the metropolis for tens of thousands of “youth”, caught up in a housing boom driven by the resettlement of the largest refugee and multicultural community after Greater Dandenong.
New residents are moving in on older generations with the blue-collar profile of working class families, tied to manufacturing and the airport. The older ‘burbs of the north and west are now flanked with motorways connecting the city to its gateways, creating corridors that are progressively being infilled by subdivisions along the Hume, Calder and Western Highways.
New estates are signed off every few months but there’s nowhere near enough money for what’s been asked of the social building effort need to cope with Melbourne’s relentless urban sprawl.
While governments pays families to keep young people at school, there’s not much money if young people fail the system, or the system fails them.
The safety net is a patchwork of church-based and not-for-profit agencies, parent-run associations and volunteer networks, hard-working people charged with competing for what many say is a non-strategic at best, politically charged for sure, pool of state and federal funds.
All youth and family organisations and agencies contacted by The Weekly say they are stretched for every dollar; the May state budget came and went, with the north and west most noted by their absence in announcements on youth funding, particularly vital mental health funding.
TAFE cuts and recent losses in the manufacturing sector have impacted badly on community pysche, and there seems to be no-one leading, no-one in charge of the plan for how to get people out of the economic doldrums – and, more importantly, how to actively engage young people to get into the workforce and keep on learning, even if they’re not at conventional schools.
THE YOUTH WORKER
Youth Projects board chairman Melanie Raymond grew up in Coburg and has worked with young people in Melbourne’s north for more than 25 years.
Raymond points to the latest government figures showing the queues at Broadmeadows Centrelink of unemployed 15-24 year olds are the longest in the state. Last month more than 3000 people registered for youth allowance and unemployment benefit Newstart.
“Clients are in worse shape than ever before,” Raymond said.
“Housing circumstances are precarious – more than half are a risk of homelessness, couch surfing and living in unstable accommodation.
“They are hungry and struggling to live on Newstart.”
In Broadmeadows, the youth jobless rate has just jumped to 16 per cent, about three times higher than the 5.1 percent Melbourne average.
Raymond is also concerned by new data coming out of the north and Sunbury areas about changing drug use among young people, with a shift away from cannabis smoking to steroid and methamphetamine use. Any of these mixed with alcohol fuels an angry cocktail.
She wants a northern investment fund to build physical and social infrastructure and to break the cycle of welfare dependence, low skills and lack of social mobility, to break the “winners and losers” divide.
“Melbourne’s outer north will become a permanent underclass of people locked out of economic and social life without further investment in the region,” Raymond said.
“The outer northern suburbs, from Broadmeadows to Wallan and Whittlesea, have the state’s highest rates of unemployment and welfare dependency, yet there is no overall plan to change those factors.
“Collaborative investment from all levels of government and the private sector are needed to build the skills and future capacity of these northern growth areas.”
She said young people in these areas remain below the national average in educational performance and face a long term future that will always be marred by a lack of skill and opportunity – unless there is action, and soon.
Education and enterprise are the golden eggs of a healthy community.
“In a tough environment, Youth Projects works with young people to make the life-changing turnaround from welfare dependence and poverty into work and training,” she said.
“We work intensively with local employers on opportunities to employ young people and we help clients assess their job readiness, looking at their skills and any barriers to quickly address gaps and problems, including literacy, numeracy, behavioural issues and realistic expectations,” she said
“Many come from backgrounds where no one in their family or extended networks has ever had or kept a job, or finished school.
“Learning about “work” is a first step – through workplace visits, work experience and useful information about working life – these are vital first steps.”
Youth Projects holds the federal government employment service contract as a “youth specialist” for the entire Calder region. It is also an apprenticeship provider, a registered training organisation and a place where young people can access mental wellbeing and substance abuse counselling.
Raymond said Youth Projects is always on the lookout for new employers willing to give young people a go, either as short-term workers or as longer term options.
“Those who do have addressed job vacancies and found reliable local workers,” Raymond said.
THE PSYCHOLOGIST
YOUNG people are psychologist Peter Langdon’s speciality. He has been on call for some of the western suburbs more infamous moments, when streets erupted with neighbourhood violence and school yards of young people were impacted.
Too many kids nowdays, he finds, live virtual lives, eyes and digits the only moving parts for long periods, scanning screens large and small, earphone existences, grid connection the only prerequisite.
Face to face skills are diminishing – why talk when you can text? But texting cuts down brain activity – facial expressions, voice nuances and body language are lost. Texting is so quick; talking takes mental effort.
Langdon wants town planners to think about young people as they “renew” our town centres and build new ones.
“Space, place and time”, these are his key ingredients to “hope”, the hope of every child to grow up and into our complex and fast-changing world and to find connections into community.
“They search for a campfire without the camp,” Langdon says.
“That’s what kids do. Risk is something they learn by.
“You’d be surprised how many kids climb out their windows at night.”
Parents often know where their children are, and often drive to pick them up – hanging out near darkened supermarkets, in parks or abandoned buildings.
Town planners, he said, need to leave spaces for young people, councils need to get out and start talking to young people from less advantaged areas, to step into their shoes for a couple of days.
“We could also see graffiti as an art form, as expression, not as vandalism.
“Graffiti dates back beyond the Roman times – it’s on all the temples.”
What we do need to arm young people with, Langdon says, is awareness about experimentation with alcohol and drugs, the threat factors to them personally and physically, addictive elements that can trap them in unhappy and often violent relationships.
While community life seemingly lacks connective fibre, Langdon urges young people to reach out when they need help, to walk in the door of Youth Projects, Headspace, Dianella, Lentara, the City Mission or Mission of the Streets and Lanes, and find people of good faith who can open doors and show them other pathways to get through the “youth” years in good shape.
Read more:
http://www.wyndhamweekly.com.au/story/1675010/where-hope-is-on-the-outer/?cs=12 
