Rural and Regional Drug & Alcohol Counsellors

The Department of Juvenile Justice provides an additional nine Juvenile Justice drug and alcohol counsellors in the regional localities of Lismore, Kempsey, Tamworth, Gosford, Bateman’s Bay/Queanbeyan, Riverina, Orange, Broken Hill and Dubbo.  This covers about two thirds of the State. 

Prior to this program these sorts of counsellors were based only:

• in detention centres,  with no access to community based young offenders;
• at three metropolitan Intensive Program Units, which served community-based young offenders.

Young offenders may be referred to the counsellors from different points of the criminal justice system including:

• Youth Justice Conferencing under the Young Offenders Act 1997;
• Courts via probationary and community orders under the Children (Criminal Proceedings) Act 1987;
• early release from custody under s24(1)(c) Children (Detention Centres) Act 1987.

Services provided by the counsellors include:

• individual counselling;
• group work;
• brief interventions;
• community alcohol and other drug education;
• referrals to health and other treatment services. 

The purpose of this is to re-integrate the young offender into the community by getting them to accept responsibility for their actions and deal with the causes of their drug related offending behaviour.  

• reduce the harm and social problems caused by drug use;
• reduce the prevalence of drugs in the community;
• stop drug use by young people.

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