Costs mount for Tasmanian youths sent to the Brahminy youth camp in the Northern Territory

THE State Government has forked out $800,000 to send three children to an interstate facility for at-risk youth.

Brahminy founder Allan Brahminy.

THE State Government has forked out $800,000 to send three children to an interstate facility for at-risk youth.

The unorthodox Brahminy Foundation, in the Northern Territory outback, uses tough love measures for children who are not suited to mainstream programs.

The State Government has now stopped sending children to Brahminy pending a review of its benefits, but three Tasmanian youths who are under state care and protection orders remain at the camp.

A government spokeswoman said about $800,000 had been spent on placing them there since 2015.

The practice of sending Tasmanian children interstate for rehabilitation rather than funding a homegrown program has been criticised by the State Opposition and the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.

The government had previously funded the Furneaux Islands Lungtalanana program for indigenous children in the juvenile justice system but scrapped it last year.

Brahminy founder Allan Brahminy has passionately defended his program saying criticism that children were taken out of their social environment was misguided.

“We don’t question when a child is removed to attend a drug rehab facility or a hospital for medical treatment,” he said.

“The model is to get people out of their comfort zone.

“We have to teach our kids to be survivors not victims any more, and they’ve got to take ownership of their actions in the juvenile justice case.”

Mr Brahminy, who designed the program based in part on his own experiences in the criminal justice system, said it was a therapeutic model that had a proven record.

One former participant from Tasmania told the Mercury she was unhappy at Brahminy, claiming she had been put in isolation.

“Some of the forms they used as discipline was far from therapeutic, but rather soul destroying,” the girl alleged. “I witnessed a boy being forced to drink a ‘smoothie’ made of Vegemite and tomatoes.”

But Mr Brahminy has denied the claims, acknowledging not everyone suited the program.

“I can tell you that we do have 38 clients that have left here that aren’t doing too well,” he said. “But definitely we have no isolation. Police come here [to check].”

Mr Brahminy said 558 children had been through the program, which had received 1000 referrals from private citizens just in the past year.

“My goal is to get something up in every state in the country. Our model works, it’s proven,” he said.