Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Independent Oversight Team
Reportable Conduct Team
Reviews Team - Child Death and Family Violence Fatality Reviews
The Commissioner for Children and Young People is an independent statutory officer, who works closely with children and young people in WA to advocate for their rights. As Manager of the Policy team my duties include: Directly providing and/or delegating to policy team members various policy analysis and advice tasks, including: - Providing high level analysis and policy advice to the Commissioner on strategic policy issues impacting on children and young people - Reviewing state and federal government policies, developing submissions and making recommendations centred on the wellbeing of children and young people utilising their own voices. Providing line management and overseeing the policy team’s plan of work through: - Facilitating regular meetings with individual staff and the whole policy team to monitor workload and proactively manage issues that may impact achievement of planned work - Providing additional supervisory support as needed to promote staff wellbeing Contributing to the Commissioner’s management team through: - Participating in or chairing manager’s meetings - Collaborating with managers of other teams to harness their expertise and maximise output quality - Reviewing internal policies - Tracking policy team contributions to office key performance indicators Contributing to the Commissioner’s work relating to Child Safe Organisations by supporting government agencies and others to develop sector appropriate capacity building strategies and developing the Commissioner’s own child safe resources. Supporting the Commissioner’s statutory monitoring functions through: - Leading statutory monitoring of the child friendliness of government agency complaints mechanisms including development of a new monitoring framework and tools, strategies for engaging government agencies and processes for analysing government agency performance. - Aiding strategic thinking regarding the Commissioner’s exercise of monitoring functions
The Commissioner for Children and Young People is an independent statutory officer, who works closely with children and young people in WA to advocate for their rights and best interests. As a Senior Policy Officer my duties include: Supporting the Commissioner’s exercise of statutory monitoring functions, including through: - monitoring implementation of recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse - reviewing the Department of Communities policies, practices and services regarding placement of children with harmful sexual behaviours in residential care - gathering information on oversight best practice and common practices in other jurisdictions and supporting development of the Commissioner’s Oversight Discussion Paper Contributing to the Commissioner’s work to foster child safe organisations in WA through: - promotion of the National Principles for Child Safe Organisations - development of the Commissioner’s own child safe resources - supporting government agencies and others to develop their own sector appropriate training and practice guidance Researching, analyzing and synthesizing information to inform policy submissions and systemic advocacy initiatives to advance the best interests of children and young people. Providing policy advice to the Commissioner on emerging issues and trends affecting children and young people. Representing the Commissioner in government and non-government forums and working groups
As a guest lecturer in the final year Occupational Therapy subject devoted to community based rehabilitation, I support the development of students' understanding of the juncture of OT with human rights and politics in the context of the community and systemically based roles held over my career and in light of contemporary OT theory.
MHAS is a statutory authority created by the WA Mental Health Act 2014 (MHA). It provides both systemic and individual advocacy for people involuntarily detained and treated under the MHA across WA and supports people with mental health issues to know and protect their rights. Duties included: - Managing four advocate teams comprising 22 mental health advocates across, Broome, Kalgoorlie, Albany and Perth through providing advice, assistance, and direction. - Developing standards, protocols and training for the performance of statutory functions. - Promoting the role of advocates in the mental health and other sectors. - Becoming engaged in complex advocacy situations, complaints investigations and negotiations with public mental health services. - Being an active member of the MHAS Executive Group which reviewed MHAS service data, budget and expenditure priorities and provided strategic advice to the Chief Advocate. - Developed processes for undertaking statewide inquiries into conditions in psychiatric units, including development of guidelines, audit tools and training for advocates. - Recruitment and performance management of advocates.