RYAN LOVIE

“YSAS will improve the health and well-being of young people affected by the use of alcohol and other drugs, through direct care, workforce development, and public policy advocacy.” - Quote from YSAS website

The Youth Substance Abuse Service (YSAS) was established in 1997 in response to the need for accessible, effective and engaging alcohol and drug interventions for young people between the ages of 12 – 21 who are experiencing significant problems with their alcohol and/or drug use.

“to continually develop leading responses to young people who engage in problematic substance use.”- YSAS mission statement

Steven Wilson

Steven Wilson or Steve as he likes to be called, has been a close friend of my father since he was 16. Steve is a social worker for YSAS, the Youth Substance Abuse Service. Steve has worked for various other Youth-related organisations in the past some of which had only a staff of 5. YSAS is the biggest organisation Steve has worked at with a staff of 140.

YSAS provides a range of youth-specific outreach, treatment, withdrawal, rehabilitation and support programs in a number of locations in Melbourne and regional Victoria. Steve’s role at YSAS is in the ‘educational research’ program, the way he explained it he trains people to help young people on drugs. He works with a lot of todays young role models for example hes been training with the Melbourne Storms on Saturdays helping them with alcohol and drug related problems they might have as well as educating them on as how to act as role models to younger generation. Steve also teaches the community about why young people are taking drugs. Most common thing parents say about the reason their children are taking drugs is because it’s seemed as ‘bad’ and they want to be seen as ‘bad’ because bad is cool. I laughed when i heard this, because this is complete bullshit. Steve agreed with me and said that kids these days arent taking ecstacy – he used this as example – to be bad but for their own reasons, some of them being the fact that it allows them to dance all night long nightclubs others do it for a adrenaline rush.

He also went indepth on how each program works, this gave me an insight on how YSAS is different from other organisations. From my notes he only mentioned a select few of the programs.

• Youth drug and alcohol outreach – YSAS staff out on the street approaching young people and helping them understand drugs and getting knowledge why the youth of today are taking drugs
• Youth Withdrawal Services – a 10 day treatment where YSAS helps young people suffering from withdrawal of drugs ( e.g. Heroine) by giving them support at their homes.
• Day programs - YSAS organises a drug service for a day, targeting young people hosting them at youth centers.
• Youth supported accommodation - YSAS helps young people who are homeless and are drug abusers and offer them accommodation and support for drug abuse.

Steve at a young age joined a rock band. Back in his days a teenager everybody was taking drugs and know one was informed about the severe things drugs and alcohol had on your life. He straightened his life out quickly and decided he wanted to help others. Most of the YSAS have their reasons some personal, others not.

I asked steve the question why do you think people work at Youth Services what entices them to do become a part of helping the young generation?

Steve answered: They feel that helping young people is just important and that the younger generation is going to be the next generation so they need to be guided. He also said that Social Justice is a common thing – they feel that all people should be treated in society with respect, wether they are young, old, rich or poor they should all be given equal treatment.

When it came to getting information about supporters and donaters, Steve explained to me it would be hard for me to get firstly even get that sort of information from any organisation as they feel as though as it is breaching confidentiality. Also most Youth services don’t keep this sort of information especially Demographic data. YSAS RARELY recieves donations, being around for 10 years he said that only around 3 donations were given and the amount of money that was donated was around $500. He said the reason for YSAS not needing donations is that every few years the YSAS is given a Government Grant of around 8 million dollars.

I explained to Steve I really needed to know about the supporters/donaters and had already had a similar problem with ReachOut. Steve tried to help me as much as he could, I decided to read him a few responses of the Why People Give Fact Sheet Kimberley gave us and asked Steve from his personal experience would he say these are some of the reasons why people would donate/support to a Youth Service, especially if YSAS asked for donations.

He answered them to the best of his ability giving me a sort of rank from 1-5 what was most common to the least common from the responses.

1. Personal passion – enthusiasm and commitment to a particular cause
   
2. Personal connections (giving to a cause which has affected them or their family, eg cancer)
   
3. Desire to make a difference – to make the world a better place and make other people’s lives better
   
4. Altruism – because they recognise that its the right thing to do
   
5. A sense of duty or obligation

Steve said that YSAS has started fundraising and it only happened this year exactly three weeks ago as a matter of fact. RockWiz a television show on SBS, helped raise money for YSAS for one particular episode of their show.

Tickets were $65, tables of 10, a result of rougly 600 people attending. $10,000 was raised for YSAS.

Majority of the people attending the show were fans of RockWiz, but there were another audience there aswell who were showing support to YSAS. Steve said that most of the YSAS staff attended bringing along friends and partners. Steve was aware that a Real Estate Agency had 3 tables, this was result from personal/bussiness networking from the YSAS Staff or even word of mouth.

The reason YSAS decided to host a fund raiser was that it was YSAS’s 10 year anniversary. The fund raiser was so successful that it will now happen every year.