Worried about sending your kid away to schoolies week? Well, now you can have them followed…
Year 12 exams are wrapping up around the country and that can only mean one thing: schoolies.
As tens of thousands of high school graduates gear themselves up for seven days of drinking, dancing and generally terrible decision making, their parents are busily preparing themselves for a week of nail-biting stress and near constant news monitoring.
Happily, a team of past police force, military and intelligence professionals are eagerly offering to keep children extra safe this year, with pre-schoolies safety briefings, a daily check-in service and, for the particularly anxious mum and dad, a “surveillance service”.
The service, which can be either passive or active, means that a member of the Guardian Angel Protection (GAP) Program will watch over your schoolie day and night and intervene if they get into trouble.
The best part? You don’t even have to tell them they are being followed. Oh, wait…
On Brisbane’s 97.3FM this morning, Robin, Terry and Bob spoke to Paul Dallinger from Condor solutions about their program and asked: given that schoolies celebrations are already well monitored, by police, Crime Stoppers, parent’s groups and the Red Frogs, is surveillance really necessary?
“At the end of the day, it’s all about ensuring children’s safety, you’re well aware schoolies is fraught with dangers,” Mr Dallinger said.
“Our staff are highly trained… we just mingle, mix and it’s always in the background.”
You can listen to the full segment here:
A number of parents called up to offer their two cents on the issue. A mother of five, who successfully sent three kids to schoolies and had them all returned in tact said she thought it was a terrible idea.
“Absoultely not,” she told the hosts.
“I’ve got five kids and if you cna’t trust your children, they shouldn’t be going, that’s it.
“If your child doesn’t have the nouse to know the difference between right and wrong they shouldn’t be going.”
Another mum disagreed, saying a well-behaved kid shouldn’t mind a watchful eye:
“At the end of the day I am looking out for them and if they aren’t doing anything wrong to start with, they shouldn’t have an issue with it.”
A former schoolie called up as well. saying she thought it was a “fantastic idea”.
“I was caught up in some horrible situations and I called my mum at two and three in the morning, if I had someone else there to help me out, I definitely would have done it,” she told the hosts.
And then finally, there was the future schoolie, a teenage girl about to embark for schoolies next week ,who could think of nothing worse than having her parents watch her.
“I would absolutely hate it. Throughout all of Grade 12, they tell you how you’re growing up and you’re going out into the big wide world and it’s time to start becoming a young adult and I feel like if I found out someone was following me I would just feel like a child once again,” she said.
“I know how to have a good time without alcohol, it’s all based on trust.”
What do you think? Would you trust your child at schoolies?