[Sub ID 4597] Family Strengthening Approach (AMES Australia)

Submission ID: 4597
Organisation name: AMES Australia
Contact name: Mr Chris Pierson
State: VIC
Contact email: piersonc@ames.net.au
Contact number: 0423854023

Which priority group of the Try, Test and Learn Fund does your idea support?
Young students at risk of long-term unemployment

What need or issue are you trying to address?
People arriving in Australia on refugee and humanitarian visas often experience difficulties in establishing themselves within the mainstream labor market with a variety of statistics indicating 60-70% of new arrivals remain unemployed 4 years post arrival. While unemployment rates for most communities equalize with the Australian population over time rising unemployment rates amongst CALD youth and or young people that are failing to transition from education (youth allowance) to economic independence (employment) is increasing.

Through an extensive consultation process with a number of communities who have expressed high levels of concern in relation to their young people completing their educations and becoming unemployed. Parents do not have the requisite knowledge base to adequately support their children achieve an employment outcomes post education and the communities more broadly do not have sufficient bridging capitol (relationships with people outside of their community) to access the 70-80% of employment opportunities that are not advertised.

This issue is further compounded by very low levels of understanding within communities of the changing modality of employment prevalent in many industry sectors where the more traditional employee/employer relationship has and continues to be supplanted by sole traders with an ABN or contractor arrangements.

What is your idea?
As a direct consequence of the issues outlined in question 2, significant numbers of young people from CALD/refugee backgrounds are completely reliant on Job Active and other government funded employment programs in finding employment. This necessitates that the young person becomes unemployed as the means of accessing the requisite vocational supports – currently for many young people from refugee backgrounds the only way of finding employment is through programs for the unemployed.

AMES Australia will strengthen the transition of young people from refugee backgrounds into employment through the development of a family strengthening approach to achieving better rates of labour market participation of young people from refugee backgrounds. We will use our considerable expertise in the development and delivery multicultural settlement, education and employment programs to develop a vocational preparation program for young people from identified communities who are have recently graduated or at the point of transitioning from education or training into employment.

The core competencies delivered in this program will model the core competencies of successful vocational parenting and form a parenting for vocational purposes skill development programs for the parents of the young people participating in the vocational preparation programs. We will run the two programs concurrently.

In a developmental framework, the young people’s vocational preparation groups function as demonstration sites for the parent participants and provide for contextualised learning pedagogy to be established supporting the vocational parent groups.