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Youth Community Development Officer
– Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council

Aim

The Cherbourg Shire Council’s Youth Community Development Officer (YCDO) position aims to promote and coordinate relevant, focussed youth services in the community.

Background

There have been a range of services and programs available for young people in the Cherbourg community for a number of years. The Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council identified that no one was monitoring how these programs and services were being established, accessed or how they were coordinated with one another. Some young people accessed some services and programs but not others. It became clear some young people were missing out on services which could improve their lives and help address some risk-taking behaviours. Read more

Why it Works

The creation of the YCDO’s position based at the new Youth Drop-in Centre has proved very successful. Young people in Cherbourg now have a person to contact and a physical location for all services and programs offered to them. Read more

Keys to keeping this initiative alive

The YCDO, in consultation with the hub network, is developing a three year strategy to address the needs of young people in the community. This will provide a sustainable, staged program of implementation from 2008 to 2010. The plan will be flexible so it can adapt to changing circumstances of young people in the community. But it will ensure, through monitoring and review, that the purpose of the plan - its vision for young people in Cherbourg - remains its focus. Read more

Advice to others who might want to try this in their communities

The youth development officer role can effectively support young people by delivering better-coordinated responses to their needs.

Although the project is still in its early stages, the YCDO says there are some key actions and principles that need to be followed for success, including:  

• open lines of communication
• being out in the community talking to young people and to service and program providers
• identifying the key members of the community who should be involved
• consultatively developing a long term plan which identifies desired outcomes and how these are measured
• having a yearly action plan outlining what is going to be done, by whom, and when it will happen
• reflecting on what is happening at each step, and
• reviewing progress at least quarterly.

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