The NT’s safety house program will be wound up at the end of this year.
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There are 177 registered Safety Houses in the NT including a number in various community locations in Katherine.
Neighbourhood Watch NT decided to shut down the program after a review earlier this year found there were now better ways to create safer communities.
Safety houses have opened their doors in the NT for 30 years and began on the theory that children were at greatest risk when travelling to and from school.
Only the NT and Western Australia still operate a Safety House program.
The context of safety is continually changing and the review found there are now better ways to engage with and educate school aged children.
To allow for new programs and initiatives to be developed, all Northern Territory Safety Houses will close in January 2019.
Neighbourhood Watch NT will reinvest the resources from Safety House into new programs.
Northern Territory Police will still be working with Neighbourhood Watch NT to help create safer communities and minimise preventable crime.
Neighbourhood Watch NT president Jenny Malone said the Safety House program has been a big part of Territory communities, but the context of safety is continually changing.
“What we found from the review was that children now face a number of other safety risks that were not as big of a concern 30 years ago, or simply were not around,” Ms Malone said.
“Not only has the percentage of children making their own way to and from school almost halved since the 1970s, the percentage of children with mobile phones to call in an emergency, has almost doubled in the past 10 years.”
Safety remains paramount for NHWNT and the resources dedicated to the Safety House program will be reinvested into identifying newer programs that are more relevant, effective and useful.
“We are going to look into how we can develop new initiatives because we want to do the absolute best we can when delivering on our goal to create safer communities in the Territory.”
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