Richard England (DFFH Practice Leader, Realign Systemic Youth Project) has worked in the child welfare sector for over 14 years, with a primary focus of high risk adolescents across multiple platforms and organisations.

More recently, Richard has focussed on enhancing and developing the evidentiary basis for a new intervention strategy which seeks to reduce the forensic risk of young people aged 10-14, building on the strengths of current models with the ambition of effective early intervention.

Amanda has been a social worker for over 10 years, with a particular focus on forensic clients. Amanda has worked in a range of roles across the community, DFFH, and, for the last 7 years, the Department of Justice and Community Safety. These have included direct client work with children, young people, and adults, as well as senior leadership and management roles.

Amanda's current role as the Multi-Agency Panel Coordinator includes high-level strategic stakeholder coordination, management and oversight of high-risk and complex young people who are supervised by Youth Justice both in community and custodial settings. The role addresses broader systemic barriers and gaps to ensure adequate support and supervision of young people to mitigate further offending risks.

Amanda’s recent work has included championing the Youth Collective Partnership between DJCS, DFFH and Victoria Police, which is an initiative focusing on robust collaboration and cooperation between statutory Departments to address high-risk offending, as well as early intervention strategies for emerging at-risk young people.

Acting Superintendent Andy McKee is a serving Victoria Police officer with 31 years’ experience across frontline, specialist services, training and corporate areas of Victoria Police.
Andy is focused on holistic approaches to child and youth offenders. This is demonstrated through his collaboration with Departments and community agencies to divert at risk children and young people away from high-risk offending and gang cultures toward positive outcomes and pro-social life choices. Andy’s recent work includes managing work units directly responsible for engagement and accountability activities with some of the highest risk children and youth in Victoria. This involves various levels of government to improve outcomes for the children and youth with a focus of moving them out of the justice system where the opportunity presents. More broadly, this also has allowed Andy to work with agencies to promote community safety while working towards the best interest of the child. Andy has worked extensively at state, national and international level including with the United Nations in East Timor as a genocide investigator. He was the recipient of an Emergency Services Foundation scholarship taking him to the United Kingdom, Canada and USA to research technology enhanced learning options and need-it-now training for emergency services across Victoria.

Ely Lee is the General Manager for Youth Justice South, having come from a Not-for-profit organizational background prior to 2018, working in homelessness, youth, family services, education and women's custodial settings. Since moving into the Department of Justice and Community Safety, Ely moved from being a Senior Clinician in the Offender Behaviour Programs, across into Community Corrections, before stepping into Youth Justice.

Ely's experience comes from various workplace opportunities, with a focus on building collaborative teams and through interagency opportunities to meet the needs of clients/organisational requirements. With this at its core, supporting partnerships to navigate the systems together, with tailored outcomes for complex clients at the heart of the work.