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Remote Area Aboriginal Work Scheme
It is evident that a significant number of disadvantaged at-risk groups are failing to respond to standard forms of intervention, particularly poor, uneducated, unskilled, young Aboriginal people from remote communities. By failing to respond to these standard forms of intervention, their situation becomes all the more desperate, apparent by the high rates of suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, property offences, violence, and reduced life expectancy - a blight upon this country. We desperately need to develop more effective ways of helping these young people.
The Remote Area Aboriginal Work Scheme was developed by Milton James, a qualified social worker with extensive experience in rural and remote social work, specialising in remote area youth work with young offenders and other disadvantaged at-risk youths. He also has qualifications and many years experience in agricultural and mining.
The Remote Area Aboriginal Work Scheme helps young at-risk Indigenous people from remote northern communities live better quality lives through the use of real work (paid employment). Work is crucial to the psychosocial development of young people. It enlarges their social experience, it provides structure, purpose, identity and valuable life skills.
The employer of choice for disadvantaged at-risk young people from remote northern communities is the meat and livestock industry, primarily abattoir work. Aboriginal people from the bush can relate to this industry.
Development of the Remote Area Aboriginal Work Scheme
The development of the Remote Area Aboriginal Work Scheme has been a long hard journey. To talk of this journey, is to talk of two great stories, and how they merged to form a unique approach on how best to help many young disadvantaged Indigenous people from urban, rural and remote communities.
The first of these great stories began in 1998, when as a Family Services Officer in the Torres Strait and northern Cape York Peninsula region, I observed a most interesting phenomenon. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander parents living on the mainland were sending their offending children to the care of their uncles on the islands where they would stop offending. I became curious to know if these occurrences could be replicated in the form of a community based court order as an alternative to detention. The opportunity to find out, soon presented itself and to my amazement, it worked.
The next major event in this part of the story began in 1999, when I had the opportunity to send serious young Aboriginal offenders from Mossman Gorge, on the south-eastern coast of Cape York, to the Torres Strait under the care of non family members. This also worked. In 2001, I had the opportunity to replicate this with young Aboriginals from Aurukun, on the central western coast of Cape York, with the same good result. This was followed by the bold step of placing young Torres Strait Islander, with very serious behavioural problems, born and raised in Cairns, under the care of Wik families in Aurukun. To everyone’s astonishment this also worked; they stopped offending and sniffing. In those days, Aurukun was a better place, thanks to the Boys from the Bush program which stopped petrol sniffing and youth offending for approximately 12 months. This was confirmed by a police report. Soon after, I managed to replicate this same remarkable result.
The critical question I asked myself was: What caused these young people to change?
Running side-by-side this good-news story was the second great story.
In early 1997, I developed the Igiliw Ngurrpai youth camp in Bamaga that focused on personal development. This was followed by the establishment of the Sesere youth camp based on a small uninhabited island of Tuin near Badu. This camping program focused on teaching work skills (fishing and diving). This program progressed to the 1998 Makrem Dorge Project on Darnley Island which was the repair and operation of a commercial fishing boat; enterprise development. Makrem Dorge literally means ‘young men working’ in Meriam Mer, the language of the eastern Islanders. Then came Opged, based on Mer (Murray Island). Opged was a unique blend of personal development activities with work in the fishing industry – the first true sea based social-enterprise. This was replicated in 1999 by the Muri youth camp based on Horn and Yam Island.
Then came another of those defining moments. In early 2000, I was giving a presentation to the Mossman Justice Group on the above social enterprises. An old man interjected saying; “I’m not interested in this. It’s easy to set up programs in the Torres Strait, they got plenty of fish, but us mob, here on Cape York, we got nothing; we got no resources to do anything like this.” No sooner were these words spoken, when I established the ‘Boys from the Bush’ program – a social-enterprise centred around the production and sale of eucalyptus and melaleuca oils harvested on Cape York.
It was the Boys from the Bush program that brought these two great stories together - real work with good support and supervision in a more functional environment.
Real work is the key. Real work not only provides income, it provides equity, purpose, identity and the structure of time and place. Real work helps in our transition from childhood to adulthood. Through work we begin to develop maturity and responsible behaviour.
Small social-enterprises, in themselves, are limited in their ability to provide these things to only a small number of people. Whereas, good support and supervision in a more functional environment enables young people to develop behaviours more conducive to a life of work.
The reality is that there are very few employment options for young Indigenous people living in remote communities outside the Community Development Employment Projects scheme (CDEP). If young people are to be helped to take up mainstream private sector employment, they must be willing and able to pursue opportunities away from home.
In January 2005, I trialled the placement of young Indigenous people from remote communities into unsubsidised fruit picking work in the Riverland region of South Australia, the Murray Valley and Sunraysia regions of Victoria. I chose the horticultural industry for its abundance of unskilled work believed to be ideal for a large number of young unskilled Indigenous people with minimal education and no work experience.
This trial set out to challenge two major assertions. The first assertion was that young Indigenous people are unable or unwilling to leave their homes and communities in order to take up employment owing to their strong social, cultural and spiritual links with their land and the complex social bonds which link Indigenous families and communities together. The trial and the rollout of my Work Placement Scheme has proven that this assertion is false; many young Indigenous people are willing and able to leave home to work as fruit pickers in other parts of the country.
The second assertion was that young Indigenous people could not cope with the structural and task demands of mainstream private sector employment after many years on welfare within families who have spent most, if not all of their lives on welfare. In this case, the results were mixed, with a strong correlation to age or the length of time the person has been disengaged from work and the nature of their dependency. Older participants who had never engaged in or had disengaged from work for a number of years and had been living a life of idleness and total dependency were more likely to be unable to cope with the structural and task demands of mainstream private sector employment. Prior involvement in CDEP did not appear to offer any advantage.
August 2005 saw the 5 month trial of placing 5 selected young people from the Renmark fruit picking group with Tatiara Meats as meat process workers in their South Australian abattoir. This trial was based on the need to overcome my inability to recruit suitable Work Group Supervisors and to seek out more stable industries willing and able to employ large numbers of young unskilled workers. The trial was conducted without a Work Group Supervisor so to test the effectiveness of the other structural components of the scheme to maintaining the participants in their employment. This trial found that the meat processing industry did offer many full-time employment opportunities for unskilled workers and that on-site Work Group Supervisors were not necessary for most participants to maintain their employment in this line of work.
This trial led to the establishment of the Wonthaggi abattoir group in Victoria which proved to be a great success. This provided the opportunity for the scheme to concentrate on off-site support and supervision, including assistance with sport and constructive recreational activities, health, income management and further educational opportunities.
In early 2008, the author declared his intention to leave Cape York Partnerships in order to develop the scheme beyond Cape York Peninsula and the Cape York Welfare Reform Agenda, which is the mainstay of Cape York Partnerships and the Cape York Insitute for Policy and Leadership.
The author's new scheme, named the Remote Area Aboriginal Work Scheme will be operating in partnership with a number of abattoirs begining in 2008.