Pre-service training
What it takes
Other custodial roles
On this page
Starting your career as a youth justice worker allows you to better understand the challenges young people in our care face.
You will work with young people every day, listen to their stories, and help them take essential steps to improve their futures.
You will collaborate with multidisciplinary teams comprising:
- department leaders
- community case managers
- behaviour support specialists
- programs and cultural support staff
- clinical staff.
Pre-service training
To prepare you for your first day as a youth justice worker, you will undertake 9 weeks of fully paid foundational training. The training forms part of your study towards a Certificate IV in Youth Justice.
The training includes introductions to:
- working in a youth justice environment
- professional standards and legislation
- programs and services for young people
- communication and engagement with young people
- internal computer systems
- trauma-informed care
- procedures - including radio communication, searches, managing medication and food safety.
Once you commence service, you will continue your study in the Certificate IV program.
What it takes
Great youth justice workers can come from any professional background. Experience working with varied groups of people is a key trait of many successful youth justice workers.
Recruiters look for the following personal traits in candidates:
- Dedication and resilience: you can maintain positivity and commitment even after setbacks.
- Life experience: you can adapt and manage challenging situations because you have had many varied experiences.
- Passion and empathy: you’re willing to work with children and young people to ensure their basic needs are met, while still setting important boundaries.
Learn more about life as a youth justice worker
Other custodial roles
You will start your career in youth justice by working in one of our custodial precincts as a youth justice worker. This can be just the beginning of your career in youth justice.
There are a variety of areas you can move into with additional training (or if you have relevant previous skills and experience).
Leadership roles
By putting your management experience to work, you can lead a specific area of operations in one of our youth justice precincts. Opportunities also include unit supervision and unit management, which provide coordination of unit activities and people management.
Video transcript - Alofa's Story
Hi, my name is Alofa.
I am a unit supervisor in Youth Justice.
So my role consists of pretty much being in the middle.
So you have to communicate with your young people, as well as staff, unit manager and higher up and other providers within the precinct.
I think quality is good to have as a unit supervisor is you have to be firm, like there's a playful side to it as well.
There's a balance.
So you can be firm and assertive in one way, but you can also have your playful side to it as well.
So if you can be empathetic as well in regards to delivering bad news, or just reminding young people about the boundaries and the rules.
You do meet your young people at a critical time in their life where they are much more vulnerable and in a vulnerable state.
So that I feel like that's where you can empower them or support them more is when they're trying to figure out their life.
Clinical roles
Clinicians at Cherry Creek work within a clinical forensic framework with young people who have committed serious offences and may present a high risk of reoffending. Qualified psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers and occupational therapists are all eligible to apply.
Safety and emergency Response Team (SERT)
Divided into engagement and response teams, SERT promotes security and maintains the safety of young people and staff. Having completed additional specialised training, SERT staff assist with post-incidents briefings, control room operations, searches and escorts of young people through the precincts.
Behaviour support specialists
Behaviour support specialists use evidence-based strategies to develop and implement behaviour support plans for young people. In creating their plans, they apply a particular focus on any trauma and disadvantage the young people have experienced in their lives.
Video transcript - Slone's Story
Malala needs a lot of love on this have been Kiran know how to mine in greetings.
My name is Sione I’m the Moari Pacific Liason Officer for Youth Justice.
Our role as cultural workers to provide information and for the young person of diverse backgrounds to make their decision.
Programs that we do we gave young person to speak up and talk about who they are, where they are from and name a culture dish if they can think of one and then usually the young person will reminisce on something that their mom cooked or something that grandma cooked.
So we get to share that their culture that brings up the ‘Mana’, which we call power and strength.
You know, we're all young once, but to encourage a young person not to be great, but to be better each day, whatever pathway they choose, it's always to be better.
Programs and cultural support
Join the team that runs the rehabilitation programs young people take part in.
- Youth engagement officers plan, develop and deliver targeted after-school and weekend recreation programs.
- Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) liaison officers focus on children and young people from CALD backgrounds, ensuring care is culturally competent.
- Aboriginal liaison officers have a similar role to CALD liaison officers but have a caseload of young people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Aboriginal) backgrounds. Only Aboriginal people are eligible to apply for this designated position.
The roles above just a sample of the opportunities available in youth justice. Apply to become a youth justice worker (External link) today and you can discuss your dream career path with the department's recruitment team.
Apply to become a youth justice worker (External link)
Video transcript - Nakia's story
I'm Nakia, proud Yorta Yorta.
I work for the Department of Justice and Community Safety and I'm a proud Aboriginal Liaison Officer.
We need to have representation of our people in in this space because we need to make sure that the cultural safety our young people have that assurance that we're here to support and protect them.
We talk about cultural tune. Being culturally tuned and that's part of our role in the sense of the wisdom and the elders and community.
I'm simply just building upon and repeating the words that they have expressed for such a long time, just to be able to make sure we build upon that.
But the setting needs to be set by Aboriginal people when you talk about Aboriginal affairs, particularly around for children and for families.
The community is reassured by the position that's being held by the right person.
Even to apply for this role, there's something special about you to be able to be a part of something greater.
The very first thing that a child feels is the separation of disconnection from family, from country.
And that's part of the processes of why some of these things happen, is that when we talk about intergenerational trauma, we talk about the separation not being able to do ceremony.
Ceremonial lands were taken away.
And that's the problem when it comes to the issues of us facing this in community, is that we don't look back far enough what that actually has done to Aboriginal people.
So when we talk about spirituality and culture, they are simultaneously connected.
We need to be able to focus on what that means.
And part of my role as liaison is someone who held a position with my own Council of Elders is to make sure that they understand how they see themselves first, and that's putting in the work with the family to be able to discuss how we're going to move forward in understanding what culture means, what the connection to country is, and how we're going to celebrate that.
Apply now
Learn more about becoming a youth justice worker
Join one of our regular information sessions for intakes at Cherry Creek and Parkville Youth Justice Precincts.
You can learn more about youth justice, the role of a youth justice worker and hear from current staff.