Youth Circuit Breaker (YCB)

Every young person deserves the opportunity to feel safe, connected and supported to thrive.

At KWAC, we believe every young person has strengths, potential and an important place within their family, culture and community. When young people experience challenges, our role is not simply to respond in moments of crisis, but to build trusted relationships, strengthen identity and create pathways that support long-term wellbeing.

The Youth Circuit Breaker (YCB) is our Aboriginal-led, community-designed framework for supporting young people who are experiencing vulnerability or are at risk of becoming involved in the justice system.

Developed through working alongside young people, families, Elders, WA Police, schools and community partners, the YCB recognises that there is no single solution to the complex challenges facing young people. Every young person’s journey is different, which is why the framework provides flexible, culturally safe responses that meet young people where they are and walk alongside them towards positive futures.

Rather than focusing on crisis alone, the YCB creates a continuum of support that builds connection, strengthens resilience and responds to changing levels of need over time.

A Community-Led Framework

The YCB brings together four connected areas of support:

Immediate After-Hours Response

Providing outreach, transport, meals, safe spaces and positive engagement during evenings, weekends and other periods of increased risk, helping young people stay safe while building trusted relationships.

Intensive On Country Youth Development

Culturally grounded programs that strengthen identity, confidence, leadership and life skills through connection to Country, culture, Elders and positive role models.

Integrated Response

Bringing together different supports to ensure young people receive the right response at the right time as their needs change, reducing fragmentation and improving continuity of care.

Through-Care

Walking alongside young people before, during and after involvement with the justice system, supporting reconnection with family, education, culture, employment and community while reducing the likelihood of future justice involvement.

Why It Matters

Strong communities are built by investing in young people before challenges become crises.

The YCB demonstrates what is possible when Aboriginal communities lead solutions for their own young people. It combines local knowledge, trusted relationships and evidence-informed practice to create culturally safe pathways that strengthen young people, families and community.

Evaluation of the original YCB demonstrated significant reductions in youth offending and arrests while delivering substantial social and economic benefits for the community. These results reinforce what community has long known—that early intervention, culture, trusted relationships and local leadership create better outcomes for young people.

Looking Forward

The YCB continues to evolve alongside community.

Our vision is a future where every young person feels safe, connected, valued and supported; where families are strengthened, culture is celebrated, and communities are empowered to lead solutions that create lasting change.

Because when young people thrive, families grow stronger. And when families grow stronger, communities flourish.

This program is currently not funded.

This is one part of what Youth Circuit Breaker looks like.

Across three camps, more than 25 young people travelled out to Home Valley, spending time on Country, around the campfire, on the river and walking together.

There were honest conversations about behaviours causing harm, accountability, respect and responsibility. Young people had space to reconnect with culture, with each other and with themselves.

But the camps are not a standalone response.  They form part of Waringarri’s interconnected Youth Circuit Breaker (YCB) approach — a place-based, community-led response designed to engage young people during school holidays and other identified high-risk periods.

It recognises that there is no single intervention that will change the trajectory for a young person.

Young people need safe alternatives at night. They need trusted people around them. They need opportunities to get out of town and onto Country.

They need culture, connection, accountability and ongoing support.

That is what YCB has been designed to bring together.

And YCB continues to be unfunded.

We continue to find ways to deliver elements of the model because our young people and our community continue to need them. But piecing together individual activities is not the same as sustainably funding an integrated response.

If we are serious about reducing youth offending, we also need to invest in the community-led responses that work with young people before, during and beyond those moments of crisis.

This video captures just one part of that work.