New England Youth Support
The New England Region
Youth Insearch is delighted to announce that earlier this year, they received formal confirmation from the Commonwealth Government Department of Science, Innovation and Industry of their support for expansion of the Youth Insearch program as part of the Safer Communities Fund. This fund was established to divert New England youth from crime and acts as a preventative measure based on the following evidence:
- Youth crime rates in the New England region have largely been stable over ten years, which suggests that new interventions are required.
- Youth crime is disproportionately higher in the New England district than the NSW state average.
- The standardised rate of juvenile victims of sexual offences across the New England region was 868.1 per 100,000 compared to the NSW rate of 660.61.
- 18.5 per cent of youth in Glen Innes and 9.4 per cent in Inverell are developmentally vulnerable on two or more domains compared to the NSW average of 9.6 per cent2.
- 24.5 per cent of youth across Glen Innes and Inverell are disengaged from work or study, compared with 15 per cent in NSW3.
Youth Insearch is committed to addressing these issues in the division of New England through the implementation of their program for at-risk youth. Youth Insearch now has case workers on the ground in Tamworth, Armidale, Inverell, Gunnedah, Moree and Glen Innes.
Media Contact
For media enquiries, please contact Dasha Romanowski on 0416 144 959 or via email.
1BOCSAR, Crime Tool, 2021.
2AECD, Australian Early Development Census, 2018.
3ABS, Census of Population and Housing, 2016.
