Youth Pathways in Rural South Australia

Yorke Peninsula Employment delivers Youth Pathways services to the Yorke Peninsula, Lower North and Barossa regions in South Australia. The service region is diverse, rural and huge, with schools located anywhere from 70 to 350 kilometres from Adelaide.

Staff say Youth Pathways has been an exciting learning experience for everyone involved. Some challenges they faced at first included staffing and transport issues, managing change with new service providers, and having limited or no local resources with which to tackle personal and social barriers.

Youth Pathways works in partnership with community service providers to help the region’s young people who are most at risk to meet their individual social, personal, educational and vocational needs, and become active members of their local communities.

By working with participants and networking in the community, Youth Pathways identified some existing significant issues such as drugs, alcohol and sexual health. To address these issues, Jodi Russack, the Yorke Peninsula Youth Development Officer, developed the ‘It’s all good’ workshop.

The workshop will be delivered to 15 Youth Pathways participants, once a week for 10 weeks. The three-hour sessions will cover:

Jodi will present the workshops with the assistance of the local service community health nurse, a dietician, a drug diversion assessor, a mental health care worker, a youth worker and visiting presenters from SHine SA and St John Ambulance.

Youth Pathways will transport participants to the workshop and give them ongoing, one-on-one support afterwards. It will continue to develop and enhance strong relationships and partnerships with schools, families, youth service providers and the local community to ensure all young people living in rural South Australia receive an equitable service that meets their individual needs.