Page: 19992
Mr MICHAEL DALEY (Maroubra) [4.31 p.m.]: On 3 November this year I received a delegation in my electorate office from people connected with the HIPPY La Perouse program. Prior to the visit I had not heard of the program. HIPPY stands for Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters. The program is new to Australia; I am led to believe it had its origins in Israel. The suburb of La Perouse sits at the southern end of my electorate and has a significant Aboriginal community. Like many Aboriginal communities in Australia, it has its problems. Some of those problems manifest themselves, as they customarily do, in criminal acts, but more significantly in hopelessness and underachievement by some members of the community. I am told that literacy levels in young Aboriginal boys in La Perouse community prior to the introduction of this program were amongst the lowest in the country. In an evaluation dated 2004 the HIPPY organisers said:
The only answer to the problems facing our community is to get people enthused about the education system. Also educating parents to take responsibility and get involved with their kids.
The aims of HIPPY La Perouse are to keep Aboriginal children at school, to give parents the skills to teach their children, to help children be ready and prepared for school, to give parents and children confidence, to show parents and children that learning is fun, and to bring the community together. When young Aboriginal children from La Perouse hit school at five years of age we often find that they are already at a disadvantage because they feel uncomfortable, they have not been taught things that non-Aboriginal children have been taught and customarily have not had access to preschools. When they get to school they are lost from day one. The HIPPY program aims not only to counter that, but also to give self-esteem to the parents. The program also aims to have parents teaching kids in the home.
HIPPY La Perouse employs a co-ordinator and three home tutors, all of whom are members of the La Perouse indigenous community. The program is funded by the Commonwealth Department of Family and Community Services. It is auspiced by the University of New South Wales and those who run the program have worked collaboratively on action research and evaluation with the Australian Institute of Family Studies as part of the Stronger Families Learning Exchange. To date 76 families have been involved with the program. Approximately 70-75 per cent of children participating are Aboriginal. Most of the participants live around the La Perouse community. The completion rate of the full two-year program has ranged from 35 per cent to 50 per cent of families who start the program. That figure is fairly good bearing in mind what they have to work with. The main reasons for people dropping out of the program are deaths in the community, families moving out of the area and family breakdowns.
They delegation came to see me because in June 2006 the program will no longer be eligible for Department of Family and Community Services funding. I do not recall exactly how long funding for the program lasts, but I believe it is for four or five years only. The funding is basically a seeding grant, and it will run out in June. I do not wish to play politics with the Federal Government on this issue because the outcome is more important than the politics. It is vitally important to the community that this program survives. I voice my support for HIPPY La Perouse and call on the Federal Government to have another look at this program to see if there is some other way to help it.