Danila Dilba diversion connects young people with their victims in effort to stop reoffending

A local diversion program is reducing reoffending by forcing young people to hear from their victims. Read how the program is reducing youth crime.

Children face their victims are less likely to reoffending according local health provider. Picture: (A)manda Parkinson

Bringing children face-to-face with their victims has proven to decrease their chances of reoffending, according to an Aboriginal health provider.

Danila Dilba Health Service runs a holistic diversion program that has a 76 per cent completion rate.

The Aboriginal health provider was contracted by the NT government to run diversion and primary care inside Don Dale Youth Detention after the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children recommended young people be exposed to culturally-appropriate services.

Chief executive Rob McPhee said the program started in 2020 and involved taking young people into the hospital to see the impacts of trauma, while also putting support services around both the child and family.

“We’ve had 50 young people participate in the program and 38 of them have completed it,” Mr McPhee said.

“We get really positive feedback from the young people and from families and where possible, we try to include the victims of their crime as well so that the young people hear from victims that are affected by their behaviour.”

Danila Dilba chief executive Rob McPhee speaks about the positive impacts of diversion programs. Picture:(A)manda Parkinson

Mr McPhee said during the three-month long program, Danila Dilba would identify other services, like alcohol and drugs or legal, to ensure the young person and their family were fully supported.

“So the focus is not just on the young person but creating the home environment to be safer as well, and we find that that’s much more successful.”

Mr McPhee said with additional funding the program could be expanded to support more young people.

“We have the capacity to cater for many more kids but we need additional resources to do that.”

As Territory Labor attempts to raise the age of criminal responsibility in the final parliamentary sittings of 2022, youth diversion will be critical ahead of the staggered implementation date that is slated for late 2023.

Attornery General Chansey Paech said diversion programs across the Territory were ready to deal with the increased capacity as a result of raising the age.

“We openly acknowledge and have said right from the start, that in order to look at anything above 12, we would need to do a lot of work with the community and the service systems, which is what we intend to do,” he said.

On Monday, Federal Labor Member for Solomon Luke Gosling said youth offending was an ongoing issue in his electorate but a cash injection of $5m to build a youth hub in Darwin’s northern suburbs had been secured.

“The Shak closed down early last year, young people in Darwin’s north have had nowhere to go after school,” Mr Gosling said.

“I visited the kids the other day in the Don Dale facility, which is an old adult male facility and is not appropriate for caring for our kids and getting them back on the right track.”

Mr Gosling said the old Casuarina Fire Station would be redeveloped into a place where kids could hang out, have fun, develop life skills, build resilience and community with one another.

“It’s a great location near the shopping centre and bus interchange, and we’re meeting young people where they are, which is so important.” he said.

“Having a destination that creates a sense of belonging has been shown to increase positive connections and to alleviate the conditions that lead to boredom and anti-social behaviour in young people.”