Webinars - ACEA

Australasian Corrections Education Association (ACEA) provides a forum for educators working in adult and youth corrections facilities to exchange ideas and insights into effective education and training programs and services for those in custody.

ACEA is delighted to work with the University of Canterbury to share the wealth of knowledge and experience from practitioners, policymakers and corrections education management across the world with you.

I look forward to receiving reflections on your learning from each of these webinars.

Dr Helen Farley

President
Australasian Corrections Education Association

March 2024

Sport and Youth Justice. Opportunities, Challenges, and a Collaborative Vision Forward by Kalyn McDonough

A strong body of literature exists on the potential of sport programs to contribute to broad health, social, and economic benefits, as well as having implications for positive youth development. Acknowledging this opportunity, sport is being recognized as a promising program gaining popularity within youth justice systems around the world. Yet, there continues to be variance in program quality and legitimate barriers to implementation, which contribute to an inequity in access across systems- and potentially a missed opportunity to connect with young people. The presentation will provide an overview of the existing literature on sport and youth justice, reflections from a Fulbright experience studying sport within the Australian youth justice system, and facilitate a conversation with participants in order to gain key insights to build a collaborative vision forward.

Speaker biography: Kalyn McDonough, PhD, MSW was a Fulbright Future Scholar ’22-’23 Australia, Visiting Scholar, at the University of Melbourne and is currently an Assistant Professor at the Center for Sport Leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University in the United States. Her research interests focus on sport for social justice and youth sport, particularly among young people involved in justice systems. The majority of her research is applied in nature and conducted with and informed by communities of practice and young people. Before her time in Australia, she was the co-head coach of a boys’ lacrosse team in a juvenile correctional facility, and currently runs a sport-based university-community partnership with Virginia’s Department of Juvenile Justice’s Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Facility.

February 2024

Innovative Solutions in Correctional Education and Employment: The Western Australian Mode by Dr Fiona McGregor

Western Australia is, geographically, the single largest corrective services jurisdiction in the world. As such, it presents multiple challenges for the delivery of education, employment, and transitional services to a prisoner population spread throughout 17 prisons (and 1 privately run prison) and additional 7 work camps across 2.5 million square kilometers. Despite this, in the last 30 years, there has been considerable innovation in multiple areas of delivery. This webinar describes the Western Australian model of delivery, through its Education, Employment and Transitional Services (EETS) division, outlining the pathways for prisoner learners from assessment through to its national award-winning traineeships program and other new initiatives such as the Entry to General Education curriculum now owned by the Department of Justice WA’s own RTO, ASETS and the Prisoner Employment Program (PEP). This webinar also describes our partnerships with employers and tertiary providers to enable wider access to education, training, and employment pathways for people in custody.

July 2023

Effective Responses to Youth Gangs in Youth Detention Centres

Kate Bjur has travelled around the world visiting youth detention centres, prisons and other secure settings for young people, as part of a Churchill Fellowship project. She has investigated effective responses to youth gangs and models of secure care that have been shown to reduce recidivism. Kate has worked with young people for over 25 years in youth detention, restorative justice, family work, policy and advocacy roles in government and the non-government sector. Kate is Assistant Director at the West Moreton Youth Detention Centre in Wacol, leading a multi-disciplinary team that includes casework, psychology, programs, restorative practice, cultural support, court, visits and intelligence teams. Kate’s presentation focusses on youth gangs – preventing gang involvement, managing young people in gangs while in youth detention, and supporting young people to exit from gangs. Kate also speaks about models of youth detention that have been proven to reduce reoffending.