Dr Jeffrey Chan

Australian Human Rights Award 2010. Finalist, Community (Individual) category

About Dr Jeffrey Chan

Dr Jeffrey Chan was the Deputy Commissioner, Practice Quality and Clinical Advisory (Senior Practitioner, Behaviour Support) from July 2018 to December 2023.  Jeff led national initiatives to build and lift the practice quality and capability of behaviour support to uphold the rights of people with disability subject to restrictive practices. Jeff’s view is that every use of restrictive practice is a failure in the system to support the person adequately.  

He was previously Deputy CEO, MINDS, Singapore. This was a seconded position by the National Council of Social Service’s Sun Ray scheme to build sector leadership and capability.

Prior to this he was Yooralla’s first Chief Practitioner and led the newly established division of Quality, Innovation and Safeguards in the organisation to embed a rights-focussed approach in practice, quality innovation, policy and organisational culture.

 Jeffrey is Adjunct Professor, University of Queensland’s School of Education and former Adjunct Professor, University of Sydney’s Sydney Medical School.

Prior to these appointments, Jeffrey held two other state-level inaugural roles. He was Queensland’s first Chief Practitioner Disability and held the inaugural Governor-in-Council appointment as the Director of Forensic Disability dedicated to safeguarding the rights of forensic adults with intellectual or cognitive disability. He was also Victoria’s inaugural statutory Senior Practitioner in Disability Services with the responsibility of protecting the rights of people with a disability subject to restrictive interventions and compulsory treatment orders.

He possesses a range of skills and experience such as state-level change strategy and innovation, high-level clinical practice leadership and governance, legislation design and implementation, systems design and establishment, service delivery, evidence-based policy development, and senior executive management.

He maintains a keen interest in applied research as evidenced by a proven record of publications in international refereed journals, conference presentations, a 2014 NHMRC grant and three ARC industry linkage grants.

He holds a Ph.D (Medicine) (University of Sydney), a Master of Arts Honours in Linguistics (Macquarie University), a Bachelor of Applied Science (University of Sydney) and a Licentiate, Trinity College London.