Forensic & Youth Justice Counselling

The justice system affects people in many different ways, and each experience requires a distinct form of support. Anoshe is not one service trying to be everything to everyone. We provide three clearly defined support pathways, each tailored to the individual's circumstances and needs.

The same understanding runs through all three, and it is the one set out in Roots vs Routes, our published framework: what a person is carrying, what the structures around them did or failed to do, and the culture they are held in.

Roots vs Routes, Anoshe's own published framework, starts from a simple but often missed idea. What looks like an individual's failure is frequently a structure's failure first: migration policy, racism, poverty, systems never built with a family in mind. Nowhere is that dynamic more visible, or more consequential, than in the justice system.

Young people, and particularly young people of colour, are documented as being perceived as older and more culpable than they actually are, a bias already named directly in Anoshe's own adultification bias screening. For families with a loved one moving through the system, the loss involved is rarely simple. Someone physically absent but still psychologically present, which is exactly what Pauline Boss's concept of ambiguous loss describes. This work does not treat any of that as background. It is the clinical starting point.

• You have been affected by a violent crime and want support that understands the practical and emotional realities together.
• You are a parent or carer of a young person who has had contact with youth justice, and want to understand what is actually going on, not just manage the immediate crisis.
• You are an adult navigating the justice system yourself, at any stage, and want support that understands the structural context, not just the individual circumstance.
• You are a young person yourself, ready to talk to someone who will not just see the charge sheet.
• You want support grounded in an understanding of structural pressure, not one that treats what happened as a purely individual failing.

This work often overlaps with other support already offered, worth exploring alongside it or afterward, depending on your situation.

• What Drugs and Alcohol Were Holding →Substance use and justice involvement are deeply entangled in practice. This is often the same territory
• Racial Trauma Processing →If cumulative racial stress, and how you have been perceived by the system, is part of the picture
• Family of Origin →If you are trying to understand the family patterns and roles that shaped how everyone responded to this, not just the event itself
• I Knew It →Undiagnosed ADHD and neurodivergence are significantly overrepresented in justice-involved populations. This may be part of a bigger picture, not the whole story
• What We Carry →Someone physically absent but still psychologically present, exactly the grief a family carries when a loved one is moving through the system

Counsellor

Our Senior Counsellor, whose practice covers alcohol and other drugs, youth justice and forensic intervention

Format

Telehealth by default, in person where it genuinely suits your situation better. Ask us directly

Funding

Victims of Crime Financial Assistance Scheme where eligible, grant-funded pathways where applicable, private and reduced-fee arrangements otherwise. The assistance scheme is a Victorian one; if you are elsewhere, ask us and we will tell you what applies where you are

Confidentiality

Discussed openly at the outset, particularly where court or legal processes are involved