What the Tasmanian Liberals will do:

Restore 'Chance on Main' youth intervention program and locate it at Glenorchy, and kick-start a Police and Community Youth Club (PCYC) for Glenorchy.

What the Tasmanian Liberals will do

• Spend $1.5 million over 3 years on restoring the successful Chance on Main youth intervention program and will locate it at Glenorchy; 
• Provide $200,000 towards the establishment of a Police and Community Youth Club (PCYC) for Glenorchy.

Both measures are the first step in a wider objective to establish Tasmania’s first ‘youth precinct’ in Glenorchy, incorporating existing services like the Pulse Youth Health Centre, and introducing additional services, to be announced later in the election campaign.

The Youth Precinct concept has worked successfully in the US and Sweden and has recently been established in Melbourne.

Chance on Main
Chance on Main was closed after the State Labor Government refused to fund it in May 2009.

This program operated for 4 ½ years and was primarily funded by the Federal Government, alongside other partners including the Glenorchy City Council.  Its mission was to give young people at risk the opportunity to discover skills and abilities and support them to achieve their potential.

Chance on Main helped hundreds of teens at risk of offending and at risk of dropping out of education.  Most of the referrals to the program over its last 12 months of operation were from the Government’s own departments, including education, youth justice and police.

The program won national awards and an evaluation in 2009 showed outstanding success in stopping kids offending, including an 82% non-recidivism rate (which means that the overwhelming majority of kids attending the program were not re-offending).

The Chance on Main program costs just $1000 per month to change a young person’s life and prevent them going into youth detention.  In comparison, it costs $20,800 per month to keep a young person in Ashley.

In the June 2009 Budget, the State Labor Government found an additional $250,000 for additional surveillance cameras at Ashley, but could not find the $1000 a month to stop a young offender getting there.

The Chance on Main program was well-accepted in the Glenorchy municipality, and included the Glenorchy City Council on its steering committee.  It was credited with a 20% reduction in crime in the Glenorchy area.

Community youth justice programs (more to be announced in the Liberals’ Youth Justice policy) are a sensible and cost-effective investing in our young people.

Police and Community Youth Club
The first PCYC was established in 1946 in Launceston and there are now 13 clubs Statewide.

The clubs are the largest youth organization in Australia and provide a wide range of sporting and recreational activities for young people, providing cost-effective sporting and recreational activities for unemployed and disadvantaged youth, including boxing, self-defence and indoor games.    Importantly, the clubs are staffed by police youth workers.

The objective of a PCYC is to reduce crime by providing positive relationships between young people and police.

While there is a PCYC in Hobart (which requires bigger premises) and a club at Bridgewater, there is nothing in between, and a Hodgman Liberal Government believes the Glenorchy region would benefit from a PCYC.

A Hodgman Liberal Government will provide $200,000 to kick-start the establishment of a PCYC for Glenorchy.