Kerre Woodham: Breaking the cycle of youth offending starts by funding services that work

John Campbell's series on young offenders called Tough Love, which is running during One News couldn't be more timely given the agonising over what to do and how to deal with offenders as young as 10 years old.

In this series, we've seen Craig Clark from Counties Manukau police and Jane King from Oranga Tamaki, and they realize that many of the young people that come to their attention come from homes where police and Oranga Tamariki are not trusted.

They're not welcome in the door, it's a blanket rejection of anything they have to offer. 

So between them, they began to assemble a team from within the community from south Auckland.

The result was Kotahi te Whakaaro (Think as One).

They take local resources, local staff,  local NGOs, local understanding, and use them to get entry into the homes where these young offenders are.

So every morning this group meets to review all suspected youth crimes in their area overnight. This is every single day.

There are eight groups who are part of this particular organisation. 

Reconnect Family Services, which is an NGO, local iwi, police, Oranga Tamariki, Counties Manukau Health, the Ministry of Education, Kāinga Ora and the Ministry of Social Development.

They get together and they discuss who the best people are to approach that particular family. So it's individual by individual. There's a tailored response for each child and they are children. They're between 10 and 13, although under the new package just announced they go out to 17 now.  

That's just the sort of initiative that the Government is going to be funding in its latest attempt to break the cycle of youth offending.  

$2 million spread across four regions; Auckland, Waikato, Northland and Bay of Plenty to fund locally led solutions to reduce youth crime. 

So they're going to look for unique community approaches, using all sorts of different agencies to try and get a response.

Now I know that there is a call to lock these kids up and throw away the key and. I get that. But if it works, and it appears that Kotahi te Whakaaro does, then surely what works should be what's funded?

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