The Youth Empowering Strength (YES) program is an essential early intervention response to young people who present with risk factors that may impact their well-being and result in harm, homelessness and/or negative health outcomes. 

The Youth Empowering Strength program is at the early intervention end of the continuum of service provision. Early intervention involves working with young people, often in the context of their families, to increase resilience, resolve issues and avert crises that may propel them on a negative trajectory, requiring more intensive tertiary responses if they enter the statutory system. 

Early intervention includes planned support at this critical stage with the aim of stabilising the young person’s situation. Providing support to young people and their families in the early stages of an emerging issue is crucial to prevent escalation to ongoing chronic concerns and more intrusive intervention as issues become entrenched. 

The Youth Empowering Strength Program will be working with young people with low to medium support needs through to high level complex needs. Support is provided to young person in the context of their family wherever possible. The service response is tailored to the individual young people’s needs for the required duration. While the service is not time-limited, it is purposeful and works towards achieving goals to enable case closure. Service provision is focused on the outcomes of reconnecting young people with natural and community supports through connecting with family, achieving and maintaining safe housing, engaging in education/training, and maintaining reasonable physical and emotional health. Together these form the basis for well-being for young people. 

The Youth Empowering Strength Program does not stand alone but is connected to the broad range of other service types that, together, provide scaffolding for the young person and their family across the various key domains of their lives. 

YES Program Target group

The target group of the YES Program is young people aged 12 to 21 years of age who are at risk of:     

• disconnecting from their family/community or support networks    
• disengaging from school, training and/or employment 
• harm, including self-harm 
• homelessness.  

YES Program Outcomes   

The Youth Support model aims to deliver four key outcomes, being that young people:    

• Experience positive relationships with their family and community    
• are engaged in education, training and/or employment  
• lead healthy and violence free lives   
• have safe and stable places to lives