PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 4: The serious issue of assessing children’s criminal capacity

PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 4: The serious issue of assessing children’s criminal capacity

About this workshop:

South Africa’s child justice legislation was implemented over ten years ago, but the rather significant amendment, raising the minimum age of criminal capacity, signed by the President in 2020 is yet to be implemented. Being a fairly complex piece of legislation which includes a rebuttable presumption of criminal incapacity, the burden on expert witnesses conducting the assessments is a substantial one, that should not be taken lightly. Considering the ramifications of the findings for children and adolescents, the implications for society, and the pressures on the police and criminal justice sectors, psychologists involved in these assessments need to adopt a balanced approach that is developmentally based. The presentation critically examines the legislation, the requirements of psychologists, the latest research evidence on the subject, the approaches to conducting the examination, and the ethical imperatives guiding such work.

Register for this Workshop

16 August 2022
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PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 4: The serious issue of assessing children’s criminal capacity

Meet our Presenters

Anthony Pillay, PhD is an Associate Professor and Principal Clinical Psychologist in the Department of Behavioural Medicine at the University of KwaZulu-Natal & Fort Napier Hospital. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the South African Journal of Psychology and his research areas include women and children’s mental health, forensic psychology and social justice issues. He received his post-doctoral training in Maternal and Child Health at Harvard, and is a Past President of the Psychological Society of South Africa. 

Anne Kramers-Olen obtained her Masters degree in Social Science (Clinical Psychology) from the then named University of Natal (Pietermaritzburg campus). She completed her internship at the Midlands Hospital Complex in Pietermaritzburg during 1998 and is currently employed at Fort Napier Hospital, which provides specialised forensic mental health services in terms of the relevant legislation. She conducts forensic mental health examinations of awaiting trial individuals, pre-sentencing assessments, assessments of children in conflict with the law, as well as rape survivor and other witness competency examinations referred by the courts. She also provides psychosocial rehabilitation interventions to State Patients. She has worked in the public and private sector, and has published papers in the area of ethics, forensics, intellectual disability and psychosocial rehabilitation. She is an associate editor of the South African Journal of Psychology and honorary lecturer at the Department of Behavioural Medicine, University of KwaZulu-Natal.

PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 4: The serious issue of assessing children’s criminal capacity

PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 3: The Complexities of Trauma: Conceptual Considerations and Treatment Realities for Practitioners in South Africa

About this workshop:

Traumatic stress diagnoses like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have clinical utility, but do not always fit neatly with the complex treatment realities of the South African context. This workshop aims to assist psychologists to think about complicated forms of trauma exposure, with a particular focus on continuous traumatic stress and intergenerational and collective traumatization. It will be demonstrated that it is important to understand traumatic stress through a complex lens that takes account of the interaction of individual, relational, contextual, cultural, socio-political, and institutional features. Some proposals for intervention at individual and systemic levels will be offered, including how psychologists may work to assist in clinical, community and public health care settings. It is hoped that the workshop will provide guidelines for South African mental health care practitioners who are faced with complex trauma cases arising from the specific historical and contemporary features of South African society.

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30 June 2022
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PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 3: The Complexities of Trauma: Conceptual Considerations and Treatment Realities for Practitioners in South Africa

Meet our Presenters

Gill Eagle is Professor Emeritus of Psychology in the School of Human and Community Development (SHCD) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. She is a qualified Clinical Psychologist with many years of experience as trainer, supervisor, therapist and consultant. Professor Eagle’s research interests are framed by a focus on the inter-relationship between the socio-political and intra-individual domains of human experience. Her primary research work has been in the field of traumatic stress, with a focus on trauma of human origin, including gender related, sexual, criminal, and politically motivated forms of violence. She has published extensively in this area and in 2010 co-authored the book “Traumatic Stress in South Africa” together with Debra Kaminer. Her work in the trauma field has focused strongly on contextual factors and has included the re-elaboration of the construct of Continuous Traumatic Stress.

Zamo Mbele is a registered clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, South Africa. Zamo has worked in both the private and public sector of South Africa’s mental health services, and he currently practices as a senior psychotherapist and is a senior supervisor at Tara H. Moross Hospital and at the WITS Donald Gordon Medical Centre. He has presented and published internationally and locally, and has contributed opinions extensively through media collaborations. Zamo is the vice-chairperson of the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG), and a director of the Ububele Education Trust. He has also worked and consulted considerably in the not-for-profit and non-government space. Zamo is also an organisation consultant for cooperate wellness and for academic and educational institutions.

 

Daniel den Hollander is a clinical psychologist who has worked in specialised mental health care, both in the public and private sectors. His expertise lies in voluntary, involuntary, and forensic treatment care, Complex PTSD and co-occurring addiction work. He has chaired the Psychology Professionals in Public Service Division of PsySSA from 2016-2021. During his term, PiPS became an established voice within parliamentary NHI discussions and building key stakeholder relationships with other government departments (e.g. DBE, SARS). He is an activist for mental health care in South Africa. He is passionate about cultivating and promoting empowerment and change: may it be in the therapy room, on radio, at governmental stakeholder meetings, or at conferences. He is a regular feature on SAFM Living Redefined, and contributor for the Mail & Guardian.

Debbie Kaminer is a clinical psychologist, Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, and chair of PsySSA’s Science of Psychology Committee. Her research interests include the impact and treatment of continuous traumatic stress.

POSTPONED: PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 2: The Complexities of Trauma: Conceptual Considerations and Treatment Realities for Practitioners in South Africa

POSTPONED: PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 2: The Complexities of Trauma: Conceptual Considerations and Treatment Realities for Practitioners in South Africa

Kindly note that the workshop, The Complexities of Trauma: Conceptual Considerations and Treatment Realities for Practitioners in South Africa, scheduled to take place on 01 June 2022 at 18:00, has unfortunately been postponed. We will revert with a new date for the workshop as soon as possible.

The workshop topic and speakers will remain unchanged.

PsySSA is committed to providing you with high quality clinical content and have therefore undertaken to further develop the workshop content to ensure greater critical engagement with the subject matter of complex trauma in the South African context.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and look forward to engaging with you on the newly selected date.

For any further inquiries please contact us at 011-486-3322

PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 4: The serious issue of assessing children’s criminal capacity

PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 1: Sexual consent among young adults: a moment or a movement?

About this workshop:

Within the legal framework in South Africa, sexual consent means voluntary or unforced agreement between parties of a legal age, to engage in sexual activity. Implicit in this definition is the notion of unambiguity. The reality of sexual and consent cultures is somewhat different though. While the narrative around sexual consent among young adults tends to emphasise ongoing, explicit, enthusiastic and verbal consent at all stages of an encounter, social and cultural scripts have produced a codification of language that reflects the intersections of identity, gender, sexuality and power. How do such scripts play out in the arena of sexual violence? How do young adults make meaning of sexual consent whether in long-standing intimate relationships or brief sexual encounters? And what are the implications for mental health practioners working with young adults who have experienced sexual violence? This workshop will explore the notion of consent: is consent simply about what happens at a pivotal moment in a sexual/romantic encounter or should we think about consent in the language of a social movement which explores the role of gender, power, and sexual and youth cultures? In adopting a sex-positive lens, rather than only seeing sexual encounters as inevitably risky and contested, we ask the question, can we have new conversations about consent, starting from where young people are at?

Register for this Workshop

10 May 2022
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PsySSA Workshop Series 2022: Workshop 1: Sexual consent among young adults: a moment or a movement?

Meet our Presenters

Angeline Stephens is the current Senior Manager of the Support Services division in the College of Humanities, UKZN, which offers a range of psychological and psychosocial support to registered students in the college. As a mental health practitioner, she works within a framework that recognises the interconnectedness between person and context. She is particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, and sexual identities and how these intersections play out in experiences of citizenship. She has a PhD in Psychology from UCT.

Janine Hicks is a Lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Law. Janine also serves as Chairperson of the UKZN Gender Based Violence Committee, and as convenor for the Navi Pillay Research Group, a collective of academics from the School of Law seeking to address critical emergent issues of race, class, gender and disability in post-Apartheid South Africa through research, law and policy reform. Janine is Project Leader for the South African Law Reform Commission’s Project 143: Maternity and Paternity Benefits for Self-Employed Workers, a council member of the Human Resource Development Council, and a former Commissioner with the South African Commission for Gender Equality. Janine holds a PhD from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, an MA degree from the University of Sussex, an LL B degree from the former University of Natal, and a BA degree from the University of Cape Town. Janine has published extensively on participatory democracy and on gender equality.

Deevia Bhana is the DSI/NRF South African Research Chair in Gender and Childhood Sexuality. She is known for the large international fields of study crossing the sociology of childhood and youth studies with particular focus on gender and sexuality across the young life course. Deevia Bhana has published over 146 scientific papers and book chapters in leading journals and press houses. She has authored/edited 11 books. Her sole authored books include Girls and the Negotiation of Porn in South Africa: Power, Play and Sexuality (In press, Routledge); Love, Sex and Teenage Sexual Cultures in South Africa (2018, Routledge); Gender and childhood sexuality in the primary school (2016, Springer); Childhood Sexuality and AIDS Education: The Price of Innocence (2016, Routledge) and Under Pressure (2014, MaThoko’s Books). Her latest co-edited books include Sex and Sexualities, Sexual Health and Justice: Perspectives from Southern Africa (In press, Routledge) and Gender, sexuality and violence in South African educational spaces with S Singh and T Msibi (2021, Palgrave Macmillan).

She is one of the Editors-in-Chief of Children & Society and an Associate Editor of Health Education Journal. She is currently the co-Chair of RINGS (International Research Association of Institutions of Advanced Gender Studies). RINGS ‘connects leading research institutes and centres from Africa, Australia, Europe, and North and Central America and aims to facilitate collaboration and contacts within gender studies across the world’. As Research Chair Deevia Bhana is actively involved in supervising a large cohort of students and has a significant impact in building the research profile of the next generation of young scholars in the field of gender, childhood sexualities and schooling.
Deevia Bhana is an NRF B1 rated scholar.

Naledi Mpanza is a Junior researcher, lay counsellor and facilitator at the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender and a Master’s graduate from the University of Pretoria. She has a BA (Honours) degree in Sociology from the University Still Known as Rhodes (USKAR/Rhodes University) where she developed her interest in climate change, social justice, human rights, health policy and youth; the former of which is evident in her academic studies titled: ‘A critical analysis of strategies aimed at addressing HIV and AIDS in the Makana Municipality: a case study of the HIV and AIDS agenda in Grahamstown, South Africa’ and ‘‘I see myself as an activist’: Youth participation in public policy-making: A critical analysis of young people’s involvement in the National Health Insurance policy submissions’- from which she has published articles from and featured on Power Fm and SABC 1’s Daily Thetha.

Naledi is currently working on her contribution to an International Research Handbook on the Sociology of Youth, based on her work in the Youth space as an activist, lecturer, project manager and researcher.

Kayla Beare is a young, passionate researcher interested in inclusivity and women’s health. Her major research projects revolve around power structures and sexual consent. Kayla is a graduate of UCT (MSocSci in Research Psychology) and UCL (MSc Women’s Health). Her work has been published in academic spaces such as the peer-reviewed journal Psychology and Sexuality as well as mainstream spaces such as The New African Magazine.

Etienne de Beer is a Counselling Psychologist in private practice. He is registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa, having completed his Masters degree in Community-based Counselling Psychology through the MaCC programme at the University of the Witwatersrand. During his internship; as part of his training he worked at the Counselling and Careers Development Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand. Upon completing his studies, he joined the Houghton House Group of Addiction Recovery Centres. Aside from his private practice, Etienne focuses on community and social development work on issues of diversity, inclusion and equality. The issues of gender, race and sexual orientation are very important to him. As a student, he was involved in a number of projects in these areas. Amongst these projects were community mobilisation initiatives in the human rights sector through the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. He was also one of the co-coordinators of the inaugural Silent Protest Wits, a pro-survivor anti sexual violence campaign, in 2013.

Pierre Brouard is the Deputy Director of the Centre for Sexualities, AIDS and Gender (CSA&G) at the University of Pretoria and a registered Clinical Psychologist. He has worked in HIV since the mid 1980’s and at the Centre since 2001. Pierre is the secretary of the Sexuality and Gender Division of the Psychological Society of South Africa, has co-authored a protocol for the University of Pretoria on trans inclusivity, is a member of the Southern African Sexual Health Association, helped to develop and run workshops on sexual harassment for the University of Pretoria, and is part of a team of psychologists who ran a 5-year transformation, diversity, and inclusion project at a Johannesburg High School.