The University of Sydney
Youth Justice Collaboration
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Weclome to the second edition of our newsletter!
The University of Sydney's Youth Justice Collaboration aims to improve youth justice outcomes and to ultimately prevent youth crime.
The University of Sydney has numerous strengths in this area and has a track record of work across disciplines, faculties and research centres directly and indirectly relevant to youth justice systems and young people in conflict with the law. These newsletters will showcase such work.
Through a whole-of-university approach, the University of Sydney can have a significant positive impact on youth justice systems and outcomes.
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The University of Sydney’s central campus sits on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and has campuses as well as teaching and research facilities situated on the ancestral lands of the Wangal, Deerubbin, Tharawal, Ngunnawal, Wiradjuri, Gamilaroi, Bundjulong, Wiljali and Gereng Gureng peoples. We pay our respects to elders, past, present, and emerging who have cared and continue to care for Country.
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Emerging online saftey issues: co-creating social media education with young people
This project, led by Dr Justine Humphry, Dr Jonathon Hutchinson and Dr Olga Boichak was a collaboration between the University of Sydney, Youth Action and Student Edge. Funded by The Australian Government’s eSafety Commissioner, the project engaged young people (12-17) and parents and carers in participatory research and co-design to develop, disseminate and evaluate evidence-based social media education resources focusing on key and emerging issues for young people’s safety online.
As an outcome of the research, six peer-to-peer videos and three fact sheets were codesigned with young people, and then professionally produced with the engagement of performers from the Australian Theatre for Young People. These evidence-based educational resources formed the basis of the Youth Online Safety campaign, which can be accessed via the project website.
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Research Student Focus: Ash Wright
Ash Wright is a Nunga woman raised Muruwari way. She is a provisional psychologist and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney whose research supports collective self-governance processes by Aboriginal communities to determine the ‘attachment’ contexts in which their children should be loved and cared for.
She recently co-authored an article that discussed the misapplication of Western developmental constructs on Aboriginal children and offered insights about how reimagining child protection policies and practices to value Aboriginal worldviews is critical to efforts to transform those systems grounded on self-determination.
This paper, co-authored with Aunty Rita Wright, Dr Paul Gray and Professor Caroline Hunt, was recently presented at a Sydney Ideas Lecture. It can be accessed through Taylor and Francis Online.
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Education in Youth Justice Centres
Collaboration members recently published an article in the Journal of Prison Education Research. This article, drawing on publicly available information, raises questions about how best the significant resources invested in Educational Training Units in NSW Youth Justice Centres can be deployed.
The authors believe that there is scope for some re-thinking of how the significant resources invested in schools in NSW YJCs are allocated and considerable scope for the three key agencies (Youth Justice NSW, NSW Department of Education and Justice Health) to collaborate on a program delivery model for young people in custody that reflects the changing circumstances impacting these centres, changes in technology, and changes in the population in these centres.
The article, written by Laura Metcalfe, Dr Cathy Little, Dr Garner Clancey and Dr David Evans, can be accessed here.
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Children's Rights and Participation in Youth Justice Systems: An International Perspective
On 25 October 2023, a free webinar was hosted by the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Youth Justice Collaboration at the University of Sydney.
The webinar provided an opportunity for academics and professionals to detail and discuss the upholding of children’s rights and participation in the English and Australian Youth Justice Systems. The webinar also provided opportunities for interactive discussions about the enablers and barriers to meaningful participation in youth justice systems.
View the webinar - 'Children's Rights and Participation in Youth Justice Systems: An International Perspective'.
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Research Centre Highlight: The Brain and Mind Centre
The Brain and Mind Centre runs the Camperdown Headspace Clinic. It has also created resources for parents of children with challenging behaviours (ParentWorks), resources for parents of children under five (Thrive By Five), and training packages for mental health professionals. The Centre is also researching the effect of adjunctive brexpiprazole on sleep-wake and circadian parameters in youth with depressive syndromes.
The Brain and Mind Centre has recently partnered with the BHP Foundation, starting a five year project to to guide investments in sustained, coordinated and digitally-enhanced youth mental health care.
This project - Right Care, first time, where you live – brings an evidence-based discipline to investments in Australia’s youth mental health systems that will provide young people with timely access to the right level of care, delivered early in the course of illness, and for a sufficiently long-period, to ensure that they thrive economically and socially.
You can find out more about the work of the Brain and Mind Centre on their website.
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ParentWorks
Parentworks is Australia’s first online, nationally available parenting program, developed by The Brain and Mind Centre. The centre developed this program to provde strategies for families to help improve parenting skills, children’s confidence and improve child behavior. The program aims to increase the involvement of parents in improving outcomes for families.
ParentWorks is free for Australian parents and caregivers of children 2 to 17. It is an ‘evidence-based’ program that seeks to help parents and caregivers manage challenging child behavious such as tantrums, aggression, noncompliance, inattentive or hyperactive behaviour, sibling conflict, getting ready for school and/or bed, and behaviours outside the home, such as problems in the supermarket.
ParentWorks has been tested in research and found to be effective. A research study with 456 parents found that the program led to significant pre-to-post program decreases in child emotional/behaviour problems, ineffective parenting, conflict between parents and parent mental health problems (Piotrowska et al., 2020).
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Pasifika Review
Chair of Social Work and Policy Studies and Collaboration Member Professor Jioji Ravulo, recently undertook a formal review of the Pasifika Program implemented by Cobham Youth Justice Centre.
This program works alongside young people who identify as being from an Indigenous-Pacific heritage to further support a deeper insight and understanding of cultural strengths and perspectives that support individual and family identities alongside their wellbeing. This initiative strived to decrease unhelpful behaviours whilst focusing on pro-social engagement with education, vocational pursuits and employment.
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