Children, youth and families

Our submission highlighted the findings from a range of Mission Australia Youth Survey reports, experience from service delivery and experiences of young people to demonstrate the need for more holistic, wrap around supports for young people to smoothly transition from education to employment. It also focused on the need for young people to have a say in decision making processes, service design and implementation.

Our submission to the Federal Parliamentary Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs focused on the increase in domestic and family violence, especially in the context of COVID 19, highlighted housing and homelessness related issues that victim-survivors experience and the need for urgent action to holistically address family, domestic and sexual violence related issues.

Our submission highlighted among other things the need to align and harmonise the compliance requirements with pre-existing frameworks at the national level in terms of content, timing and reporting requirements to prevent duplication.

Our submission focuses on prevention and early intervention and diversionary approaches to youth justice in Tasmania. While we recognise that some young people may be involved in repeat offending, we believe that investment in the youth justice system should be weighted towards prevention, early intervention, diversion and targeted intervention.

Mission Australia is supportive of the ‘towards zero’ approach adopted by the Plan. However, to be successful it needs to more seriously tackle the issues of housing and economic security that are so closely inter-related to domestic and family violence and determine many of the risks and outcomes for women and children.