Aidan Knight
By AIDAN KNIGHT
YOUTHSPACE has less than a year to live, with funding due to run dry by July and only an 11-month roadmap left to keep thousands of vulnerable young people off the streets.
Youthspace held it’s 2026 Supporters and Stakeholders dinner last month on its Morwell premises along Princes Drive.
The meeting, which attracted 20 of the 200-plus supporters invited, discussed Youthspace’s challenges and successes in recent times, the biggest topic being funding reductions, which will cut them off from the 40 young people walking through its doors each afternoon.
“We’re pretty much dead in the water come July,” executive officer Trevor Carstein conceded.
Mr Carstein said he is “buying months at a time” to keep the doors open, warning that the short runway leaves “not a lot of time” to secure Youthspaces’ future.
Youthspace has more than 2300 young people on its books, for resources, food, and support.
Mr Carstein said the pressure on services had grown sharply in recent months.
“We have noticed, even in the last couple of months … the demographic of what we are dealing with in this space has pivoted. Mental health is unbelievable,” he said, noting staff were seeing increasing numbers of 14-year-olds who “just cannot get that help” elsewhere.
Despite the uncertainty, Youthspace has recently secured state government support for two early intervention officers, who will be based in local schools five days a week.
“We have got access funding for two new early-intervention officers within the schools that will come out of staffing from here, which is amazing,” Mr Carstein said.
“That means we’ll have one at Kurnai (College) and one at Lowanna (College Newborough), and they will be there five days a week, which is huge.”
The running cost of the facility is roughly $50,000 per month.
Mr Cartsein has worked to reduce this since his entry to the role last November.
Taking up cleaning roles internally, and using his prior connections as a qualified chef, the new executive has transformed the program into one which has avenues to receive everything it can, in-kind, as a community organisation.
The whole operation is only possible thanks to the kindness of well-respected local businessman Ray Massaro, who still retains ownership over what was once his dealership showroom.
The finances that cannot budge make up that final figure, in wages, power and other utilities, and vehicles and unavoidable running expenses.
Much of the food handed out to young people who come through the doors of the Princess Dr site is sourced from local outlets on board.
Mr Massaro, as benefactor, urged those in the room to utilise any combined influence they might have to press the state government to restore stable funding.
“They have dropped the ball like it was a 10-ton brick, on our toes,” he said.
He saw the best chance is in an election year, which the state will be facing this November.
Guest speaker, Morwell Senior Sergeant David Fyfe, made a point of thanking Mr Massaro for making it possible to assist the 2400 young people through YouthSpace.
Sgt Fyfe reiterated just how much he valued institutions like Youthspace that “intervene with young people at your workplace, so I don’t have to at mine”. He found it to be critical to intercept disadvantaged youth as early as possible to ensure they have a better chance of staying away from the youth justice system.
As a law enforcement officer, Sgt Fyfe identifies a cycle of loosening restrictions to keep kids out of court, which then shifts to a governmental “tough on crime” mentality before swinging back, citing it as a failure to address why young people disengage from school and community in the first place.
“By the time it hits my station, potentially it’s too late,” he said.
“Kids are like clay … if the clay is wet, we can fix it. We’ve got to stop baking into these kids the fact that they’ve been in trouble once or twice, and that’s the end of them.”
Mr Carstein said many schools continued to claim attendance funding for children who were not actually engaging in class, while Youthspace was providing the day-to-day support.
Mr Carstein said he had lodged 47 grant applications, with 32 knock-backs despite being able to “quantify exactly what we do” with detailed data on outcomes and costs.
“I can name four people that we’ve stopped visiting David’s [police] station in the last month,” he said, adding that some young people previously caught stealing food were now in Youthspace programs instead of “over Mid Valley trying to steal food … because they’re hungry.”
Mr Carstein argued that every young person kept engaged at Youthspace was a saving for health, justice and education systems.
As plates were cleared and the meeting wrapped up, the message from the room was clear: without urgent, long-term backing, Latrobe risks losing a service many see as a frontline defence against youth homelessness, hospitalisation and offending.
