Cobham Youth Justice Centre has unveiled an innovative trade centre, aimed at helping young offenders gain skills for work after custody. The centre is metropolitan Sydney’s main remand facility for males, and is located in Werrington, around 50 kilometres from the CBD. It has a total capacity of accommodating 90 young people, ranging in age from 15 to 21.
A sustainable way to support transition into the community
The recent launch of the new trade centre is the result of a successful Try a Trade event held at the centre in 2022. That event gave young people the opportunity to learn new skills that were designed to help them successfully transition back into the community. It also sparked the idea for a permanent trade centre that would be able to deliver ongoing education.
Try a Trade included 10 workshops held across a range of trades, including carpentry, painting, mechanical, landscaping, bricklaying, welding, barbering, plumbing, warehousing, and barista skills. Young people tried different trades to see what they enjoyed, laying the foundations for relationships that could potentially be nurtured after leaving custody.
Both Youth Justice NSW and Training Services NSW partnered on the project, which led to the roll-out of Try a Trade programs at youth justice centres across NSW.
“This initiative uses out-of-the-box thinking to get young people who haven’t had the greatest start in life to learn the skills helpful to them in their future,” Minister for Youth Justice, Jihad Dib told The Bursar.
State-of-the-art facilities
A spokesperson for Youth Justice NSW told The Bursar that all young people in NSW youth justice centres attend school each day, run by the NSW Department of Education.
The trade centre is designed to be an expansion of that core education delivery. For the low-risk young people in custody at Cobham Youth Justice Centre, the access to on-site trade training has the potential to make a meaningful difference by helping the young offenders gain practical skills and trade qualifications that will help them secure employment when they rejoin the community.
“This experience goes beyond the classroom; it enables participants to dress like they are going to a worksite and to hone their skills in working alongside others. It is also a great opportunity to connect young people to local businesses and help form those important relationships before entering the workforce,” Minister Dib told The Bursar.
Facilities include an outdoor workspace and on-site classroom, for hands-on learning experiences that cover skills such as vehicle detailing and basic automotive servicing, how to change a tyre, and maintaining gurneys and blower vacuums.
Young people will also have access to the latest in sustainable technology as they learn about water preservation, recycling and the importance of solar panels as a source of electricity to run the trade centre’s workspace. The program also includes a directive to train young people in key employability skills such as communication, teamwork, and problem-solving. Funding for the initiative has been provided by the Department of Communities and Justice, in partnership with the NSW Department of Education.
Opportunities for young people leaving the program
“The program, while still early, is already yielding success with a young person who left Cobham Youth Justice Centre recently taking up a plumbing apprenticeship with a local plumbing company involved in the program,” Minister Dib says.
A spokesperson for NSW Youth Justice told The Bursar, “we are working closely with Training NSW who are doing an amazing job trying to place young people in jobs and apprenticeships”.
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So far, according to the spokesperson, the project has delivered multiple positive outcomes.
“Eight have joined employment in their chosen pathway, 26 identified a set trade as a career option whereby they had not previously identified a career pathway, one commenced his apprenticeship, one has signed up with an employer as a possible traineeship, three young people commenced work release in a trade, and an additional three more are currently about to commence a trade, or interviewing with an employer from the Try A Trade program.”
With the potential for these promising results to become part of a sustainable solution to help prevent young offenders from re-offending, Minister Dib told The Bursar that “the Trade Centre at Cobham Youth Justice Centre is a great initiative that will help set young people up for success”.
“Not only can participants learn hands-on skills, but the replicated workplace environment also teaches young people how to go about a typical workday.”
