Youth Education Centre is a public school in South Australia catering for at risk youth - those young people not accessing traditional schooling options and disconnected from the community. It is part of the federally funded Partnerships Outreach Education Model [POEM] initiative project identifying what works for young people who, for a variety of reasons, are not accessing traditional schooling options. The project has been extended as part of the South Australian government's Social Inclusion reference of School Retention. The hypothesis being tested is that a 'broader connectedness' between government and non-government agencies, industry, church, sporting clubs and community members provides real partnerships, and achievable, supported pathways for disconnected young people. The fabric meshing these interagency partnerships are education and training, based on learning plans, developed and shared by participating agencies.
We have developed a model that increases the retention of disconnected young people by providing positive education, training and life outcomes in partnerships with a range of agencies and strategic alliances. We have identified the critical components of our project as coordination, partnerships, processes, skilled facilitators, responding to young people and structures. Our outcomes to date have included developing a 'Virtual School', maintaining disconnected young peoples' links with education, increasing community capacity, developing very productive and strong partnerships with government and non-government agencies and industries and providing programs complementing service agency strategies. We have identified the barriers to the model as a lack of systems response for multi and cross agency collaboration; barriers to information sharing by professionals; the resource demands of disconnected youth; existing funding guidelines at a personal level and the establishment of specialised funding arrangements for agencies.
Excerpts from published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.
The conference website is indexed at TD/TNC 82.161; selected available papers are indexed from TD/TNC 82.351 to TD/TNC 82.371.
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