By Rebecca Hampton | Reconnect Case Manager
Our Reconnect program engages with young people aged between 12 – 18 years old who are at risk of being homeless, are homeless, or who want to re-engage with family, school, training and education. Our program provides support by maintaining relationships with young people, caregivers, families and external services. We are open to self-referrals or other agencies.
Since February 2021, the Reconnect team have been providing a cultural education lesson in the Detention Centre every fortnight. Our sessions involve activities such as; culture, personal profiles, language, art, identity maps, community surveys, therapeutic games which involves a lot of communicating and positive interactions between each other and teachers.
The Reconnect team has had positive feedback from the staff at the Detention Centre regarding our sessions, and the young people look forward to our return each fortnight. We will continue to attend the sessions with the young people in Detention to reinforce positive behaviours and encourage their participation at the Gap Youth and Community Centre programs in a positive way.
Ideally, when the young people leave detention, this program will assist in building young people and staff at the GYCC’s relationships, to increase the likelihood of young people reintegrating back into the community with
assistance and guidance from our programs. Our Reconnect program is providing familiar friendly faces for the young people to connect with.
The Tree of Life activity was about identifying all the different aspects of the young person’s identity, including past, future goals, strengths and support system. For each section, the young people were to draw part of their tree and write notes around it.
Comic book activity
Rebecca and Darren will make these into a book for the young people to keep after they are completed. The drawings in the comic strip include what young people enjoy doing when they are back home on country. Some of the comics drawn below include waking up, getting out of bed and going to school; hunting, swimming, travel and family.
