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Central Australian Youth Link Up Service

Mission

The CAYLUS mission is to address substance abuse by young people through supporting community in initiatives for young people.

History

CAYLUS was funded in response to raised community awareness of the serious disability resulting from long-term petrol sniffing. A recent report forecast that the cost of institutional care of long-term sniffers in the NT will rise to approximately $10 million annually. The report also identified a number of other sniffers (approx 70) who have serious impairment but who are currently being cared for by families. These disabilities resulted from a core group of 100 long-term sniffers identified through Nganampa Health research. Current estimates indicate there are approx 500 petrol sniffers in the central region of the NT. The health, social and economic cost implications of this group’s continued petrol vapor abuse are enormous.

Day-to-day many CAYLUS activities are built on the work of two previous projects that addressed petrol sniffing.

The first was the ‘Healthy Aboriginal Lifestyle Team’ (HALT), which ran for a period in the 1980s. Its model was to work with remote communities to support Aboriginal initiatives dealing with petrol abuse, and it was one of the first to use Aboriginal art as a way of expressing ideas in culturally appropriate ways.

The second was ‘Petrol Link-up’, which ran for a year in the mid 1990s. Its work continued in the HALT tradition, and they were responsible for the introduction of the concept of using Av Gas as an unsniffable alternative to petrol in remote communities in the Centre. Despite good outcomes, funding was not continued to the project.

CAYLUS is aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the two previous projects. It is with reference to these and the national and international evidence base that CAYLUS plans actions and projects. We also continually contribute to this evidence base through promoting rigorous external evaluation of projects targeting substance abuse in our region.