Young People Speak About The Issues That Matter To Them

The issues that are important to young people are many and its very positive to hear young people speaking up.

At SYFS there are regular opportunities for young people to speak up, participate and advocate. Staff encourage and provide resources to assist them.

It was timely given there is a Federal Election coming up that young people were invited by the ABC to chat about their issues. It can be very daunting to be interviewed at any time, let alone by media, and yet the young people who were interviewed did an outstanding job. They were articulate, had prepared for the interview, had personal experience of many of the issues they raised and had ideas and hope for the future.

The issues they raised and spoke passionately about included;-

• Cost and availability of affordable housing
• The availability of social housing and the importance of it
• The help and support they have been provided by supported accommodation services and staff
• How this makes a big difference to their lives.
• Cost of living on their low incomes. They talked about the cost of food, medicine, electricity, gas, transport and education.
• They spoke about health care, the improvements made recently to increase bulk billing as costs of seeing a Doctor has been high and some have not seen a Doctor because of the cost. They loved the new Medicare urgent clinics and they were happy one was going into Shellharbour.
• Education and the importance of having options and fee free training and they knew TAFE free had been introduced.
• The importance of respect and a voice for young people and also Aboriginal people and people who migrate to Australia and refugees.

The young people also talked about the importance of getting encouragement, being supported to access the opportunities, being supported to “break the mould”. They also talked a little about how Government Representatives and the media and others who are interested could reach them and how information could be better provided.

The most inspiring part of what they all said was they have hope for the future. They spoke about the future and how they do feel hopeful that people voting in this election will understand the essential nature of doing better in providing supported accommodation, more social and affordable housing; increasing social security benefits and low incomes so young people can earn a decent income, universal free and available health care and education.

It was inspiring.