What's the Answer? - Create

• When young people were further asked to give further feedback about the potential stigmaattached to specialised services, the following responses were given: there is a definite stigma associated with accessing specialised services: its impact orsignificance varies for each young person, with the greatest impact happening during the teenyears amongst peer groups, but it has less effect when you’re older there’s more stigma attached to residential units than to young people in out of home care I think there is a huge stigma attached to young people in out of home care, but I don’t thinkthere is a stigma attached to services that are specialised to assist young people in out ofhome care workers need to support young people and make sure that a negative stigma doesn’t stopyoung people accessing services they need I think services need to be run to best serve clients, and if that means specialising then that iswhat must be done; stigma can be removed the adolescents are not incompetent, yet they may still need extra help there isn’t any particular stigma attached to using existing specialised services, although thename of the service could have an impact on this and more general names are better e.g. oneof the government transitioning service in South Australia is Northern Youth Support Services,a name that does not specifically identify it as being for young people in care attending specialist services can attract a negative stigma which young people leaving carewould be completely over after getting out of State care; but accessing specialised serviceswould still be okay. The logistics and public awareness of attending or engaging with theservice, could affect young peoples’ willingness to engage with the service.Mainstream servicesPreferred service• Mainstream services were seen to offer: more variety and a normality which can be stabilising for young people more access and availability better processes and policies which make bigger and more established bureaucraciesaccountable for their service provision or lack of service, eg. obtaining a receipt number forenquiries, means your needs and requests are centrally logged and not lost in the system.Not preferred• Mainstream services attracted criticism because: they’re more likely to ask a lot of questions you can’t answer or request irrelevant information,eg. like parent’s permission / information workers without specialist out of home care knowledge wouldn’t know about relevantentitlements, unless they had special education and training. They should have specialisedprofessionals within a non-specialised service. there wouldn’t be same guarantee of a ‘youth culture friendly’ reception from servicesfocussing on all ages the resources provided to mainstream services, would not allow the level of service provision –so services wouldn’t be available to all applicants, at levels appropriate or required of youngpeople leaving care they have higher case loads and longer wait times.29