Phillip Mendes

Dr Philip Mendes is a Professor in the Department of Social Work, Faculty of Medicine at Monash University, and the Director of the Social Inclusion and Social Policy Research Unit (SISPRU). He coordinates the Australian Welfare State and Social Policy subject in the Master of Social Work course.

His key research areas include young people transitioning from out-of-home care, welfare conditionality (particularly the Cashless Debit Card), Supervised Injecting Faclities, and Jewish community responses to institutional child sexual abuse. Philip is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for a number of academic journals including Social Alternatives and Australian Social Work.

He has published widely in peer reviewed academic journals (over 150 publications in total), and is the author or co-author of 13 books including Young people transitioning from out-of-home care: International research, policy and practice co-edited with Pamela Snow (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), the third edition of Australia’s Welfare Wars (UNSW Press, 2017), Empowerment and control in the Australian welfare state: A critical analysis of Australian social policy since 1972 (Routledge, 2019), and Compulsory Income Management in Australia and New Zealand (Policy Press, forthcoming June 2022).

For the last 22 years, he has been engaged in ongoing research on leaving care policy and practice, is the Australian representative on the Transitions to Adulthood for Young People Leaving Public Care International Research Group, and has completed major studies pertaining to youth justice, employment and mentoring programs, disability, and Indigenous care leavers.