The people holding this work
An Oversight Consultation and Advisory Panel has been established to guide the development and implementation of the restorative justice pilot at every stage. The Panel brings together experts in the prevention of, intervention in, and response to harmful sexual behaviour, alongside deep experience in restorative justice practice.
Anna Tydd
Anna Tydd
Anna is a restorative justice facilitator, culture change expert, mediator and former solicitor who, since completing her law degree in 2001, has focused her career on preventing harm to children and adults and building compassionate, just responses for people who've been harmed. She has held senior legal, policy and advocacy roles in Royal Commissions and government inquiries in Australia and overseas, with a particular focus on institutional responses to child sexual abuse and sexual harm.
Anna is passionate about creating and supporting processes that respond to relational harm, guided by a commitment to redistributing and repositioning the impacts of harm, and the misuse of power within relationships. Central to this is her advocacy for alternative responses that move away from punitive and adversarial pathways to centre and foster processes that focus on understanding and meeting the needs of the people impacted, and enable for truth-telling, accountability taking and repair.
The team guiding the pilot
Melissa Brown
A social worker with 36 years' experience as a frontline clinician, team leader, senior manager, group facilitator and educator across NSW government and non-government services responding to child protection, sexual assault, domestic violence and harmful sexual behaviour. Most recently Clinical Coordinator of the Illawarra and Shoalhaven New Street Service, Mel now runs an independent practice spanning restorative facilitation, counselling, supervision and research, with a focus on decolonising practice and centring the needs of people who've been harmed.
Beth Woodstone
A highly experienced child safety specialist combining system-level strategic insight with genuine humanism. Currently senior child safety advisor within a large education system, advising on prevention of and response to student harm, including IT-enabled sexual harm. Previously worked across reportable conduct investigations, statutory child protection, and led an educational practice uplift program for the NSW child protection sector.
Phoebe Barton
Restorative justice practitioner and project manager at Open Circle within RMIT's Centre for Innovative Justice, where she manages Weaving Repair, a restorative justice program for young people impacted by harmful sexual behaviour, funded by the Victorian Legal Services Board.
Sam Ivancsik
A proud Wiradjuri woman with a Bachelor of Social Work (2012), Sam has worked across child protection, domestic and family violence, and sexual assault services, including with children and young people displaying sexually problematic or harmful behaviours. She has spent the last five years integrating technology and somatic therapies into her clinical practice.
Tim Warton
Tim is Senior Manager, Practice and Implementation with Youth Justice NSW, and a casual lecturer in social work with the Sydney School of Education and Social Work (SSESW). His appointment as an Honorary Research Fellow with SSESW is linked to his ongoing research into how young people's experience of the justice system affects them, and how this can inform rehabilitative efforts. Tim has a long association with the youth justice system in NSW and Australia, and is an experienced counsellor and social worker with a demonstrated history of working with young people who have sexually offended, or who have problematic sexualised or violent behavioural difficulties.
Maryann Hearn
With over 30 years' experience in conflict resolution, Maryann was one of the first Specialist Youth Officers approved under the Young Offenders Act (1997) and a Restorative Justice Conference Convenor in Queensland, facilitating more than 800 conferences specialising in sexual offences and serious personal harm. She has also contributed to criminology research at Griffith University.
Martin McMillian
Has held one of the lead roles for many years within Queensland's Department of Youth Justice restorative justice program, which has provided restorative justice conferencing in response to youth offences, including sexual offences, since 1997.
Organisations behind the project
OneResolve
Lead organisation, coordinating development, delivery and evaluation of the pilot.
Weaving Repair / Open Circle, RMIT ↗
Collaborating partner, sharing practice knowledge in the development of a joint restorative practice manual.
Social Outcomes ↗
Independent evaluation partner and experts in evaluating the impact of initiatives and projects of community importance, measuring whether this pathway delivers real repair.
The Snow Foundation ↗
Philanthropic funder investing in pilot development and evaluation.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live and work, and pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We recognise that colonisation caused, and continues to cause, deep cultural and systemic violence against First Nations people, and that its impacts are ongoing, including the overrepresentation of First Nations people among those harmed by violence, and by the violent systems built to respond to it. This project is committed to responses to harm that sit outside that colonial legal system, and to practices that centre culture, community and self-determination.Acknowledgement of Country
We're committed to inclusion and equity, regardless of sexuality, gender identity, race, ability or background. Our work is human-centred: every person has the right to be treated with respect and dignity. We recognise the intersectional nature of people's identities and lived experience, and that we don't live in an equal world. Powerlessness is experienced widely and in many forms, shaped by systems, institutions, community attitudes, racism and other kinds of discrimination, and we're committed to doing what we can to help restore power to the people it's been taken from.Our commitment to inclusion