A GROUNDBREAKING program to cut the number of young offenders in Dubbo has been rolled out by Juvenile Justice NSW.
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The program works with offenders and their family members to strengthen family relationships and change behaviours to prevent young people committing further crimes.
Professor Chris Trotter of Monash University has been visiting Dubbo to offer assistance in implementing a newly designed program to demonstrate the impact of family harmony within juvenile offenders.
“Family relationships are crucial to the background of juvenile offenders in the community,” Professor Trotter said.
The program, Act Now Together Strong, is gradually being introduced across Dubbo and the state by the workers of Juvenile Justice NSW.
Better known as ANTS, the program illustrates the importance of family relationships in the community which can be the defining line between an individual committing an offence or not.
ANTS Project Officer Julie Hillian believes it is an empowering program.
“The good thing about ANTS is that it is not designed as for a specific age group, gender or race,” she said.
“It is designed to be easily adaptable to any individual and their family situation.”
Juvenile Justice NSW supervises and cares for young offenders in the community and in detention centres.
“It is thought to be unusual to work with the family and to offender at the same time,” Professor Trotter said.
“We have designed this program to revolve around interventions and mediation sessions with two of our trained workers per family.”
“What we’re doing is groundbreaking and with six to eight one hour sessions over a two month period, we hope we can implement permanent change in the family life of an offender and in the long run prevent that individual from committing further offences.”
Having already worked with a total of 16 families during the past 18 months, Professor Trotter was pleased with the extremely positive responses he had already received.
“Before the program commences we ask each family to submit a survey about their family life, and then to complete the same survey after they have completed our program.”
“The results have been impressive,” he said.
“You find that a lot of the time, families can develop bad habits of conflict over minor trivial issues.
“We like to show that you can break the pattern, identify what your own problems are and formulate resolutions together.”
ANTS Project Officer Julie Hillian strongly believes that going into the family home is an added bonus.
“The families are able to relax in their own environment while we conduct the mediation sessions,” she said.
“Because we work as a mediation group, it allows us to hand over the skills to the families in order to continue the process together once they have completed the program.”
The ANTS program is able to show a change in family dynamics as well as a powerful reinforcement of family harmony, according to Professor Trotter.
“We’re lucky that it’s funded by the Australian Research Council, Monash University and the NSW Attorney General and Justice,” he said.