The charity wants to have a round-table discussion with the NSW Premier, Community Services Minister, Mental Health Minister, Corrective Services Minister, Attorney General and any other minister who wants to join in.

Tamworth Citizen of the Year, long-time magistrate and Youth Insearch advocate, Mal MacPherson, will meet with Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson on Friday to ask him to organise the meeting.

Mr MacPherson said in the grand scheme of things, the program wasn’t asking for much money.

“We are basically asking for the amount of money it costs the community to keep one young person in custody for 12 months, and with that we can save many,” he said.

“I’ve seen how they don’t respond to getting locked up. It’s not scary to them because their home life is worse than detention. I know this program works, and that’s not from sitting on the sidelines, I’ve been involved with it for 17 years.”

Mr Anderson said he wanted to create a “push from within parliament” to help the life-saving program.

“What I’ve offered Mal is to facilitate a meeting of members of parliament that have a connection to Youth Insearch,” he said.

“We would then say to all of those members ‘this is the challenge Youth Insearch is facing, these are the dollars they need, how do we go about getting that’.”

Mr Anderson witnessed the work Youth Insearch does when he visited a Christmas camp at Lake Keepit a couple of years ago.

“It was very powerful, it’s extraordinary,” he said.

“Some you can just see on their faces, they’re in a world of hurt. To see them come together and support each other is incredible.”

Youth Insearch CEO Heath Ducker said the Tamworth MP could really make a difference.

“He could really play a role bringing the various ministers together for a joint meeting in parliament house to discuss the funding that could be provided to Youth Insearch,” Mr Ducker said.

“Because we work across a number of issues, we believe we qualify from funding from across the government rather than a single department. They can all pitch in and make a contribution.”

As Youth Insearch works across three states, Mr Ducker believes the charity should be mostly federally-funded, but “the states should pitch in as well”.

“They have a role to play in terms of funding us, particularly for the work we do directly on some of the issues they're responsible for, such as crime prevention and jails,” he said.

“And if that’s split across the three states, it’s just over $100,000 each, which is a small amount of money.”