Centre for Multicultural Youth

CMYI has delivered JPET services to young refugees in the West, North and South East of Melbourne for almost nine years. In that period the JPET program has undergone dramatic changes, including shifting from the Department of Family and Community Services to the Department of Employment and Work Relations. It is CMYI's view that as a result of the changes that have taken place in the program over the past two years, JPET no longer provides us with an opportunity to work with young refugees in a holistic or sensitive manner. Consequently, and with regret, we have decided to cease delivering JPET services. We will continue to advocate for the right of young refugees to be provided with culturally sensitive service responses when seeking support and pathways into education, training and employment. At the same time we will also continue to argue that the JPET program model fails to recognise the specific needs of young refugees. We understand that many services are working to their capacity and will find the lack of a CMYI JPET service a gap for refugee young people. We believe though, that it is better to not provide a service under this model, than struggle to provide what will ultimately be a ‘bandaid' response. While we will no longer provide a JPET model we have recently been funded to deliver the Newly Arrived Youth Support Service (NAYSS) to young people in the South East of Melbourne and will be expanding this service to include Brimbank, Moonee Valley and Hume in the near future. We are fortunate to be able to provide the NAYSS service as a response to the diverse and complex needs of newly arrived young people aged between 12-21 years. We would like to offer our support to agencies in the region that seek to provide services and resources to young refugees and migrants, and ask for your support in continuing to advocate for the rights of young refugees and migrants. For further information on the NAYSS service, or any other queries in relation to JPET, please contact CMYI Program Coordinator, Mary Danckert, on 9349 3466.