International youth justice trends and approaches seminar

Our Social Impact and Research team presents their next online seminar on Thursday 21 May from 10.30am–12pm.

The topic for this seminar is youth justice in a changing international landscape: Trends, evidence and promising approaches.

This seminar forms part of our Social Impact and Research Seminar Series. The series presents research that supports those working to improve outcomes for tamariki and whānau across Aotearoa.

What the speaker will discuss

The COVID-19 pandemic placed youth justice systems across the world under significant strain. It also accelerated, exposed, and sometimes distorted deeper trends that were already under way.

In this seminar, speaker Dr Iain Matheson, will explore the shifts that have taken place, including trends, evidence, and promising approaches. He will examine changing contexts, policy and practice responses, and key system enablers. He will consider the full range of youth justice services, from prevention and early intervention through to residential care and youth detention.

He will use overseas research and evaluation, our own organisational oversight, lived experiences, and practice-based evidence. He’ll also include relevant community, cultural, and Indigenous knowledge.

We hope you can join us for an interesting and thought-provoking session.

Please register here via Teams to attend this online seminar:

https://events.teams.microsoft.com/event/19a9b7cf-de50-4e18-936e-0cb5b6db2679@5c908180-a006-403f-b9be-8829934f08dd

If you have questions or topics you are interested in seeing covered, please email us at research@ot.govt.nz

Dr Iain Matheson is a New Zealand-based international consultant, researcher, and mentor specialising in care and protection and youth justice. He has over 40 years’ experience across policy, practice, and system reform.

His work is driven by a strong focus on children’s wellbeing, the use of evidence and learning, and the development of responses and services that achieve better outcomes.

He’s a qualified social worker who began his career in residential childcare in England and Scotland, before moving into management roles.

After emigrating to New Zealand in 2002, he held national operational responsibility in Child, Youth and Family for youth justice and care and protection residences, alongside strategic leadership for residential and foster care.

Since then, he has undertaken advisory, research, and reform work in New Zealand and also in Australia, Canada, and the UK.

Over the past 20 years, he has regularly worked with Oranga Tamariki and its predecessor organisations.