Mr. Karl Ducque:

I know the young person Deputy Crowe was speaking about. It is another family devastated because of a young person not getting the response they needed. He had been suffering psychosis for the last two years and had not been getting the treatment that he needed. It is one reason I am sitting here, to be honest. It is because I have seen so many friends dying over the years. Now I am a youth worker and I am out on the street like Mr. Perth. I am engaging with young people. They have to be involved in criminal activities, drug dealing or selling or be affected by it, for me to engage with them. I am just following up what Mr. D’Arcy said. The resources are there and we are engaging with young people but we are firefighting out there at the moment. We are on the street and building relationships with young people for years. We are getting them out of the drugs trade, sending them to college and getting them the treatment they need but you go back the next day and there are two new young people replacing them. It is about the bigger picture. It is the policies. It is the trauma they are experiencing. It is what Mr. Perth talked about – that intergenerational trauma of the areas where we are where drugs are creating these subcultures all over the country. People are going to prison, the kids are being neglected, they are not going to school and leaving early. It is constant. Something bigger has to change more than just working individually with these youth workers firefighting.

The levels of burn-out youth workers are experiencing at the moment is shocking.