9. Rehabilitation Programs
It is worth noting the good work of some Federally supported rehabilitation services. Mt Theo and Ilpurla outstations are run by Indigenous organisations and offer the most effective rehabilitation options for young people in our region. This is especially so because of the operation of the NT Volatile Substance Abuse Prevention (VSAP) Act, which provides the courts with the capacity to make mandatory Treatment Orders for individual inhalant abusers, but no capacity to lock up people so ordered. As such, given the characteristics of the client group, a facility located in town has little chance of holding on to these impulsive and addicted individuals. The remote locations of the two outstations provide a more realistic option for this group.
The Bush Mob House, which provides access to youth under 18 years of age in Alice Springs, provides a flexible support system to the client group. It is well used and accessed by people in Alice Springs and from out bush for access to a safe place to stay, support with drug and alcohol issues and a range of other services. The service is poorly funded compared to similar residential programs in other states.
In relation to the VSAP Act, which has the capacity to mandate individuals to rehabilitation in approved centres, we have been working with the NTG to improve on it’s enactment of this legislation, which has lengthy and inexplicable delays in it’s operation : the first cases referred to this process took more than a year to be acted on. This has improved somewhat, but the delays are still unacceptable : people identified as chronic inhalant abusers are allowed to continue sniffing petrol while legal systems move with glacial slowness, endangering the inhalant abusers and those around them. There is still scope for improvement and we are committed to making it more responsive.