Town united in calls for Integrated Family and Youth Services to reign in teen terrors

Residents of a small town near Toowoomba are fed up with the constant vandalism, foul language and lewd behaviour emanating from a residential care home.

Residents say Integrated Family and Youth Services needs to do more to control the teens in its care.

BACKYARD fires, smashed windows, burglaries, foul language and indecent exposure.

The residents of a small town near Toowoomba have weathered two years of horrific treatment at the hands of a small group of teens living at a residential foster home.

Now they have had enough and are calling on the home’s operator – Integrated Family and Youth Services – to act.

Ray has lived across from the home for 11 years and said the destructive behaviour of a small number of the teens had become intolerable.

“Night is the worst time, with constant visits from the police,” he said.

“Our neighbour’s 14-year-old daughter has been subjected to swearing, abuse, exposed genitalia, mooning, flashing.

Rarely a week goes by that Ray does not see the local glazier roll up to replace a shattered window.

“I sat here one day and watched a boy tear the security door off its hinges,” he said.

Any time he spoke to the teens he was met with more abuse.

Queensland Police crime data shows at least 51 offences linked to the house in the past two years, including 12 assaults and 21 counts of property damage.

The matter came to a head on Thursday when the community organised a meeting at the pub to discuss the home.

It was attended by police, Lockyer Valley councillors and the Lockyer state MP Jim McDonald.

Mr McDonald said he was aware of the house and had asked IFYS to shut it down or move it on.

When that failed, he had approached the landlord and asked them to not renew to IFYS’s lease.

There are conflicting reports of what will happen next, with some residents concerned IFYS will relocate the residential home to another property nearby.

Ray – himself a former juvenile detention officer – sympathised with the kids who genuinely needed a safe place to recover from the trauma of their upbringing.

He doesn’t want them kicked out and has instead called on IFYS to better manage the handful of “bad eggs” who lead the other children astray.

“The company needs to be held to account,” he said.

Mr McDonald said he agreed.

“I understand the need for placement of the kids in the community, but that supervision must match the needs of the children,” he said.

“You can put four foster kids in there and they all play happily, but if you put a couple of criminal offenders in then they terrorise the neighbours.

“Criminal offenders who continue to commit criminal offences should be immediately removed from that environment.” A spokesman for IFYS said the company was aware of the community’s concerns and was working to address them – this included working with police and Mr McDonald.

“We want peaceful neighbourhoods,” he said.