Picture: BROOKE LITTLEWOOD
A NUMBER of mentoring programs will soon be offered by the Australian Red Cross Limestone Coast to locals who have repeated contact with the criminal justice system.
Red Cross regional manager David Walshaw was the guest speaker at October’s Millicent Lions Club meeting and discussed the possibility of introducing the four programs – Step Out, Police Call Outs, Connections and Youth Ready – to the region in upcoming months.
“As many people know, Red Cross has a long history of working with offenders and their families in prisons and in community based settings,” Mr Walshaw said.
“They are all guided by those fundamental principles – humanity, neutrality, independence and all of the others we have discussed.”
Step Out, which is the first program the organisation is looking at putting into place, is a peer mentoring program for people aged 14 to 25 who have repeated contact with South Australia’s justice system.
It involves volunteer peer mentors working one on one with participants in prison three-months before their release and then for as long as it is needed following their release to ensure there is no recidivist behaviour.
“Step Out is a program that is running in Adelaide and they are very keen to bring it down here to the South East,” Mr Walshaw said.
“I have been in contact with Uni SA and I have been talking to one of the placement officers there.
“We are both keen to get third and fourth year social work students out into the field so they can start working.
“Firstly, to give a good grounding of what the criminal justice system looks like in South Australia because a lot of them will end up working in it and secondly to assist Red Cross in delivering one of these programs.”
The second program Red Cross hopes to introduce to the South East is called Connections.
Mr Walshaw said Connections was a “straight out” community mentoring program which supports offenders which relocate to their hometown from Adelaide’s remand centre or the Adelaide women’s jail and need one-on-one guidance.
“This program makes sure offenders do not end up back in the remand centre or prison,” he said.
“What we want to try to do with these people is develop social skills with them and work with them to develop pathways to government agencies that are able to assist them and make sure they are aware of all of those things.
“If there are opportunities for them to be retrained and to work and become a fruitful member of society.
“That role of that volunteer in that setting is a very, very important one.”
The third program Red Cross hopes to make available in the South East is Police Call Outs.
With a growing need for the program, Mr Walshaw hopes to get it in place as soon as possible.
Police Call Outs supports young people aged 10 to 18 years when they have been arrested by the South Australian Police and have been taken to the police station without parent presence or support.
Red Cross volunteers are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to support the youth.
“SAPOL can phone a volunteer that may be on call and ask them to come and sit with the child and make sure there is a witness to the truth in those proceedings,” Mr Walshaw said.
“We are working with SAPOL at the moment to get Police Call Outs in place.”
The final project the organisation is working on is Youth Ready, which Mr Walshaw said would help people complete their community service order if there was not an organisation which would take them.
“Through Youth Ready we work with the Department of Human Services and the Corrections Department to make sure that people who want to complete their community service order can.
“Bearing in mind we have to make sure we are protecting ourselves from any other recidivist behaviour that might occur in our care, but Red Cross is an opportunity for them to work in our op-shop or in some other non-patient or client contact area for us.”
Contact the Red Cross on 8725 3622 or visit www.redcross.org.au for more information.
