Thursday, 24 March 2022

Women and Mentoring

Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (18:26): (1850) I raise a matter tonight for the attention of the Minister for Youth Justice and Minister for Crime Prevention, and the action that I seek is for her to provide immediate funding to the organisation Women and Mentoring, to the tune of $58 000, to tide them over until the end of this financial year.

I recently had the pleasure of having some discussions with the CEO of Women and Mentoring, Ms Tricia Ciampa. Now, I had met Ms Ciampa via Zoom on a committee hearing, and I had been so impressed by the work of Women and Mentoring. It was fantastic that Ms Ciampa was able to bring along to the committee hearing a young woman who had been through the youth justice system in Victoria and then gone through Women and Mentoring’s fantastic program, ultimately had turned her life around and was now making a really fantastic contribution to our community.

So I know I speak for other members of that committee across the aisle when I say that we were struck by the work that Women and Mentoring does, working in particular with young women who have been in our youth justice facilities—and I have spoken at length just this week about some of the problems that we are seeing, dreadful problems in our youth justice facilities—in order to then reduce reoffending and help these young people rebuild their lives.

In Victoria of course at the moment more than 60 per cent of young people who exit our youth justice facilities are known to reoffend in the years following their release. The actual figure of course will undoubtedly be significantly higher. Nonetheless there is no government funding for Women and Mentoring beyond the end of this month. The organisation would obviously love to continue, and I would love this organisation to be able to continue to do what it is doing at the moment—and that is providing mentoring support to 29 women. The organisation has excellent plans to expand over the next few months to reach another 10 to 15 young women and also to deliver training and screening processes for another 13 mentors.

Unless the government is in receipt of some information that I am not, I would argue that this sort of program is exactly the kind of program that we should be supporting. It is not just supporting the young women themselves who have been through the youth justice system, it is also supporting any children they may have—and I am advised by Ms Ciampa that many of the young women who they engage with do have young children of their own. Of course we know that people who have been through our youth justice program are then at greater risk of having their children engage with child protection. We have far too many young people moving into child protection then graduating—if I can use that word advisedly—into youth justice. I think, unless the government is in receipt of some information that they should share that I do not have, that Women and Mentoring should be able to continue their excellent work. They need $58 000 in order to do so, and I call on the Minister for Youth Justice and Minister for Crime Prevention to provide it as a matter of urgency.