She is one of the co-developers of Response Based Practice and founders of the Centre for Response Based Practice. She is an activist who challenges taken for granted assumptions about perpetrators, victims, the rape of children, so-called mental illness and much more. Coates’ work is applied in diverse areas including criminal law, family law, women’s shelters, human resources, death reviews, and government policies and practices. Coates will bring to the program a critical focus, a deconstruction of psychologizing people, and a focus on responding to oppression while supporting people caught in “the system”.