Youth Services

Family Outreach Service Youth Services delivers 3 key programs, all designed to support our young Aboriginal people living throughout the Kimberley Region.

ALIVE & Kicking Goals! (AKG) is a Youth Suicide Prevention/Life Promotion Program. We are a team of 6; with 1 Coordinator and 5 Peer Educator/Mentors. We are 90% staffed, and 100% led and managed by young Aboriginal people from the West Kimberley, who all have lived experience or have been affected by suicide.

This program was initiated by the local community in 2008, specifically the Broome Saints Football Club, who were determined to address the rising number of self-harm and suicide incidents amongst their teammates, family, and community.

We’ve been delivering our service since 2010, predominantly throughout the West Kimberley, holistically tackling this huge issue, and where resourcing allows, expanding our reach from Broome across the rest of the Kimberley travelling 1200kms on occasions to support our young people.

With a focus on holistic education and awareness around Social & Emotional Wellbeing, our aim is to promote a strong and healthy lifestyle. We do this through the peer education model, delivering workshops Kimberley-wide, and one-on-one mentoring based in Broome. We are an aspirational team, and the only limit to our service delivery is capacity based on funding. Recently we commenced a partnership with Rio Tinto allowing regular travel to their West Angelas mine site, to deliver workshops and provide one on one support, particularly to young Aboriginal staff.

We want to empower our mob through lived experience and storytelling including using narrative therapy techniques. Together we’ll identify the journey and take it step by step providing support, education, and awareness in breaking down barriers and the stigma around anxiety, impulsivity, depression and ‘the shame factor’, in the hope of increasing resilience, understanding and reducing the high suicide rate that affects our young First Nations people.

The Together We Ride (TWR) program supports at-risk youth throughout the West Kimberley, to develop life skills and reconnect to family, community, culture, and education, interrupting the trajectory to the criminal justice system. It is an early intervention program engaging 12-14-year-old males within Broome who are deemed at risk, including through disengagement from education, family and community. The TWR team consists of 1 Coordinator, 1 Project Support Officer and 4 deadly young Indigenous mentors, who provide intensive mentoring. The aim is to support these young people to overcome personal challenges and achieve personal goals as a proactive, strengths-based response to curb youth crime and to re-engage in education, family and community. Acknowledging disadvantage, trauma, family domestic violence and neglect, and disconnection to family, culture, and community as causes of youth disengagement, this diversionary program aims to improve life and leadership skills, increase self-esteem, promote inclusion through team building activities, promote a sense of community and encourage positive family connections.
Through intensive daily mentoring, and after-hours support, the TWR program creates a wraparound safety net for each participant, consisting of community support, family support, social and emotional wellbeing support, and cultural support.
We provide regular healthy risk-taking activities, On Country Day trips and overnight camps, and the fostering of strong engagement in education, with a focus on life and leadership skills. Activities are also focussed on ‘giving back’ to community and feeling connected to their local community. Together We Ride aims to encourage a change in anti-social behaviour, whilst strengthening or establishing family engagement and Cultural connection.

LifeCycle Youth Connect (LCYC) operates mobile bicycle repair sessions for young people in targeted Communities across the West Kimberley. The LCYC program aims to address the over representation of Aboriginal youth across the Kimberley in contact with police, youth in juvenile justice facilities, disengagement from school and to support young people with mental health issues including self-harm and suicide. The program visits remote communities and youth events with a bike repair trailer, using the activity of delivering bike repair skills to create a safe space for children and young people to engage with the team and partner service providers. Since its launch in 2018, LifeCycle has formed partnerships with a range of organisations including WA Police, ALIVE & Kicking Goals!, DCP, Broome Youth & Family Hub, Derby Youth Centre and Aboriginal community schools and councils.

LCYC is currently unfunded, with our focus being to secure ongoing funding and continue the delivery of this valuable program to remote communities and towns across the Kimberley, in partnership with the AKG and TWR teams.