Ms Simone Shaw1
1Department of Justice and Community Safety, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Simone Shaw, Clinical Director at Corrections Victoria, Department of Justice and Community Safety, is a Forensic Psychologist with almost 30 years’ experience in the field of corrections. As Clinical Director, Simone is tasked with governing the application of best-practice, evidence-based services across Corrections Victoria, with a view to enhancing the safety of the Victorian community through meaningful rehabilitation. She works closely with internal leaders and external stakeholders to meet this goal, including holding membership with the Offender Development group of the national Corrective Services Administrative Council.
In October 2024, Victoria’s Department of Justice and Community Safety launched their new Correctional Practice Framework (CPF). This framework acts as the evidence base for working with people in corrections to achieve the vision of Safer People, Safer Prisons, Safer Communities. It contemporises the ‘what works’ approach to behaviour change, recognising the ethical imperative of moving away from being a service that simply ‘contains risk’ to one that sees the individuals within it, acting to use empirically informed practices that support an individual’s personal rehabilitation journey, with a view to fostering long-term self-sustaining change. Central to the success of this approach is a recognition that support must be delivered in a responsive, trauma-informed, way, through the vehicle of high quality, safe, working relationships. This presentation will outline how corrections in Victoria is using strengths-based approaches to work with people to make meaningful change in their lives. It will detail the importance of using language that invites motivation, along with indicating how every aspect of the system, and all those who work within it, have a role to play in helping people achieve success in their lives at the end of their sentence. It will articulate the system’s goal of not simply preventing outcomes, but creating them.