KEEPING IT DEADLY
Get out, Get Deadly, Stay Deadly, On the Road
Sydney Region Aboriginal Corporation has identified the need for healing and greater Indigenous community control over child safety issues. Our organisation is invested in delivering programs that empower our Mob and heal our people.
Our Keeping it Deadly program© has been created based on the feedback from our pilot program ‘Aunts and Uncles’ that we delivered in Cobham Juvenile Justice Centre and through consultation with the staff and many of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander detainees there.
The Keeping it Deadly program© is designed to address the over representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth in detention, build on their strengths and proactively work to reduce recidivism.
The program is run in three distinct components
Get Out, Get Deadly, Stay Deadly and On the Road.
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfares report on Youth justice in Australia, 2016–17 found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander over-representation has increased over the last 5 years. In 2012–13,
Indigenous youth aged 10–17 were 15 times more likely than non- Indigenous youth to be to be in detention, rising to 18 times more likely in 2016–17. Although our kids only make up 5% of the Australian population between the ages of 10–17, 50% are in detention or detained while on remand.
Get Out, Get Deadly provides Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth an opportunity for capacity building, improve individual social and emotional well-being through cultural connection strengthening and gain community support. We run this program both in NSW Juvenile Justice Centres and to the local community from the SRAC Community Hub.
The successes of this program are the opportunities for the youths to build capacity, we were able to achieve this by:
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Improving social and emotional wellbeing through developing greater self-awareness and developing positive responses and coping mechanisms.
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Developing understanding around health and fitness through learning about basic nutrition and importance of physical activity.
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Learning basic cooking skills and exploring cultural cooking experiences.
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Facilitating external services to engage with the youth’s and provide referral pathways for youth who are detained to access when they are released.
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Strengthening the youth’s connections to culture as Aboriginal people we know the importance of connections to culture and the ability of these connections in healing trauma. To meet this goal, we engage local Aboriginal Elders to support and teach the youth through the sharing of knowledge, wisdom and healing that only our Elders possess.
Stay Deadly Cultural Camps are targeted at children and youth living with a disability (diagnosed or undiagnosed), at risk of offending, disengaged in school or with another identified need. Over each financial year SRAC runs up to 4 capacity building camps. The camps are focussed on cultural connection, strengthening identity, capacity building and linking participants into meaningful services, community programs and skill development.
These camps link the participants to a number of services whilst reconnecting them to culture. We invite the Community Projects to run a session at each camp and help SRAC select 4 participants to become mentors for On the Road.
The On the Road program is delivered by Sydney Region Aboriginal Corporation in partnership with various sporting Community Projects and community organisations. Our partnerships allow us to educate mainstream community to be more inclusive of people with disability through the universal love of sport and recreation.
We travel to regional and remote communities to deliver a community day with a sporting clinic demonstrating that people of all ability can participate.
The tour takes the selected participants from our Stay Deadly camps back to country to peer mentor other youth and run a sporting clinic that is inclusive of people of all ability that promotes team building and capacity building throughout each drill.
The community projects that partner with us provide us with volunteers who dedicate their own time to come. We are extremely grateful for their continued commitment, support and partnership.
The destinations On The Road visit, reengage the participants with culture, connect to land and people. We choose each destination based off SRAC employees returning to country. It is an initiative within itself for SRAC to promote self-care to our Team and allow them to return home and be the leader in showcasing to the kids how important a sense of identity, self and pride is.