By TOM HAYES

 

HIGH school students across Victoria and the Latrobe Valley are being guided in the right direction thanks to the Blue Edge program.

The program is facilitated by Blue Light, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to creating positive connections between young people and their community. Blue Light was introduced in 1976 and was well known for its Blue Light Discos.

“We provide an array of programs for young people between the ages of 10 and 21 across the state. And those things are programs like the Blue Edge program, which is our secondary school program,” Blue Light Chief Executive, Elissa Scott said.

Blue Light also provides a primary school program, DASH, catered for students in Grades 5 and 6, as well as one-on-one programs.

“In the last 12 months, we have had about 14,500 young people go through our programs,” Ms Scott said.

Blue Light is one of the only youth organisations partnering with police, emergency services, and community organisations, providing a unique, one-of-a-kind, learning experience.

The Blue Edge program has about 40 programs running simultaneously across the state, with a weekly 90-minute session to high school students, delivered by facilitators alongside police and/or emergency services. The Blue Edge program was introduced in 2018.

Workshops are run at two schools in the Latrobe Valley, Traralgon College (at both the junior and senior campuses) and Newborough’s Lowanna College.

“Blue Edge is a program that we have a specialised facilitator run and co-ordinate, and police are participants in that program,” Ms Scott added.

Schools select students to participate in the program, and if they are willing, they attend workshops consisting of up to 20 students. The workshops cover mental health and wellbeing, safe decision making, emotional regulation, resilience, and connection.

Blue Edge acts as an early intervention and prevention program for secondary school students, in an attempt to build positive relationships with their peers, the community, and police.

“The program involves a fitness component… a shared meal… and then we do the workshop component,” Ms Scott said.

Senior Constable Leigh Thorpe has been delivering the Blue Edge program to Traralgon College since the start of 2024, beginning with the Year 9s at the senior campus in the first semester, now working with the Year 7s and 8s at the junior campus during Semester 2.

Snr Const Thorpe told the Express that police officers dress casually for the workshops, which helps students see police officers as everyday people.

Snr Const Thorpe had never previously worked with children in this space before, so the opportunity arose as a learning curve for her as well.

“There is no judgement at all, its just about safe decision making and broadening their eyes, we dabble a lot into mental health,” she said.

Snr Const Thorpe believes the program is chosen to facilitate for children from Years 7 to 9 because those students in particular are finding their feet and are being opened up into the real world.

“That Year 7 to Year 9 age group, they’re still immature, they’re being put into peer group pressure situations, they’re still finding themselves, so we have quite a variety of students in the programs,” she said.

Particularly through the mental health lens, the age group of 12 to 16-year-olds is becoming much more highlighted in education circles.

“It’s a lot more in the forefront now with kids that age, and kids that are struggling with mental health, or family members that are struggle with mental health,” Snr Const Thorpe added.

“A lot of kids actually don’t understand what mental health is… so that’s why they bring mental health into it (the Blue Edge program).”

Coming to the end of her first year in the program, Snr Const Thorpe took some time to get used to delivering the program to students.

“You’ve got to really ask a lot of questions to be able to get the feedback. Not so much ‘yes’ and ‘no’ questions either… asking open ended questions. I don’t find that part difficult, because we do that in actual police work anyway,” she said.

She found that as the program progressed throughout the semester that students would open up more, which is part of what the program is all about in terms of connecting with the community.

“They get a lot more comfortable with us and they’re able to open up and share,” Snr Const Thorpe said.

At the end of the semester, students get to experience the Summit Survivor camp in Trafalgar East.

Snr Const Thorpe found the workshops to be successful when speaking to students after the 16 weeks. Students will also happily share differences they have noticed, which is only the first step into becoming young adults that make the right choices.

Nonetheless, she hopes students take away valuable lessons from the workshops, and perhaps think back to these workshops when an instance arises later in life.

Snr Const Thorpe also shed light on the fact that students learnt that police aren’t the “bad guys” and are there to help whenever the community needs them.

Ms Scott believes that the programs have had a positive effect on participating students, and a study backs up her claims.

“All of our programs are evaluated. The Blue Edge program itself had a longitudinal study done – it was about two-and-a-half years – by the University of Melbourne,” Ms Scott said.

“We looked at the results from hundreds of our programs, and what we know is that young people going through those programs, firstly 90 per cent of them say they would recommend it to their peers, and they felt that they grew and developed over that time.

“We know they create connections. We know that their mental and physical health scores go up after they’ve completed the program. They develop better problem solving skills – particularly around healthy and safe choices. So the program is shown to work really, really well.”

Recently, Blue Light received a federal government grant, which will see them be able to develop further services to provide the Latrobe Valley. Blue Light looks to commence its one-on-one mentoring program during 2025 in the Latrobe Valley.

Blue Light is also looking to create a program surrounding community connections for Year 10 students, which they also hope to roll out in the Latrobe Valley next year.