[Sub ID 4837] Building a brighter future (Multicultural Youth SA Inc)

Submission ID: 4837
Organisation name: Multicultural Youth SA Inc
State: SA

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

What need or issue are you trying to address?
In recent years, MYSA has seen a spike in the number of refugee adolescent girls and adolescent mothers experiencing Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). In 2014-15, 85% of MYSA’s female clients reported being in a violent relationship at some point in their lives and of these, 65% were minors who were exposed to violence from older partners. In response to this issue, MYSA commissioned the University of South Australia to undertake research into some of the key emerging issues affecting refugee minors in violent intimate relationships.

There are no prevalence estimates for refugee women resettled in Australia because most IPV research centres on Western, and to a lesser extent, non-refugee migrant women (Ghafournia, 2011; Versha & Venkatraman, 2010). Preliminary findings of the study revealed that IPV starts young, as young as 12 years of age, and the partners are generally much older than the minors (19-25 years) and most minors do not know about the cycle of violence because they were excluded from culturally distributed forms of knowledge that their Australian-born peers take for granted. As such they don’t have the access to support strategies to help them move forward, recover and engage in work and community life.

What is your idea?
MYSA is proposing a customised strategy that applies a strengths-based intervention approach to refocus on building a bright future and regaining control of their lives. The model is designed to provide a holistic, integrated continuum of youth-specific, specialist services for those who are most at risk of long-term unemployment and affected by IPV.

The model is comprised of five core elements and together make up the architecture of the project.

1. Youth employment pathways program
2. Be Your Own Boss (BYOB)
3. Social enterprises
4. Career insights
5. Wrap-around intensive case management support to address the complex range of employment barriers.

This approach builds on New Zealand’s social sector trials to work with a specific segment of the community through intensive intervention strategies to respond to the individual, social, cultural and systemic barriers to employment particularly relevant to young people experiencing IPV. Personality testing and tools for example will aid insights into the participants to be active and aware of their own internal impact factors and take an inward analysis on how they can move themselves forward with support and mentoring. This approach inevitably has a flow-on effect for their children.