Youth Justice Reform in the Department of Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) has partnered with the Brighton community to co-design and co-create early intervention and prevention initiatives aimed at reducing the number of children and young people entering the youth justice system.

Through this “co-everything” process, Youth Justice Reform worked alongside local organisations, schools, police, Aboriginal people and organisations, community members, children, young people and their families, including those with youth justice system involvement. With these grants, community partners in Brighton are working towards creating a community where young people are safe, happy and belong.

At the end of September, Brighton Council and DECYP notified community partners of the outcome of community applications to deliver these initiatives.

The following initiatives will be funded under the Government’s Place-based Youth Justice Initiatives funding:

• Under One Rainbow – video series with people with lived experiences, with questions developed by local students
• Material Institute – one-off event to celebrate positive stories in the Brighton community, and creation of a Brighton Story Book
• Ann Sutcliff (local young person) – pop-up Youth Café six-month trial to promote peer-to-peer connection in a youthrun space, operating after business/school hours
• Brighton Youth Action Group – development of short films on youth safety, designed by and for young people.

In October, a representative from DECYP’s Youth Justice Reform team joined Brighton Council’s Community Development Team, a representative from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal Service and Fiona Miller from the Jeder Institute at the Queensland Community Development Conference to present on the project.

‘The Beauty of Timing – Squares and Blobs Get it On in Lutruwita/Tasmania’ was presented as a storytelling and in-circle practice workshop. The group shared how the community and different levels of government came together with a shared goal to create positive outcomes for children, young people and families as an authentic place-based approach to early intervention in the youth justice space. They also detailed the conditions that made it possible to achieve the authorising environment that made this happen