We were excited to collaborate with Zoe Belle Gender Collective and Starlady by hosting their Trans and Gender Diverse inclusive practice: prevention of family and sexual violence training on 12th March.
Zoe Belle Gender Collective (ZBGC) is a trans and gender diverse (TGD) led advocacy organisation based in Victoria, auspiced by Thorne Harbour Health . ZBGC currently has two areas of strategic focus:
- Improving the lives and well-being of TGD young people and their families. This is led through our long-running Youth Project which provides inclusive practice training, sector advice, community resources, events and youth workshops. It is part of the Healthy Equal Youth (HEY) partnership and is funded by the Victorian Government.
- The primary prevention of gendered violence experienced by trans and gender diverse people. Our flagship campaign in this space, Transfemme.com.au, is a world-leading website and resource series that promotes healthier relationships between trans women and cisgender men.
Starlady is a queer trans woman/feminine person living on Dja Dja Wurrung country and is the Director at ZBGC. She is passionate about social justice, the prevention of gender-based violence and dismantling trans misogyny. Starlady is the lead author and campaign director of Transfemme.
The in-person training was open to BPIFVP members across the Bayside Peninsula and covered the following topics:
- Understanding TGD people’s identities and relationships
- Respectful communication
- TGD experiences of sexual violence, intimate partner violence and family violence
- Identifying transphobia and transmisogyny as risk factors for family violence and service barriers
- The latest research related to TGD people’s experiences of intimate partner and family violence
- Inclusive practice tools to support TGD people
- Feminist perspectives of TGD inclusion within the family violence sector.
As a TGD led and run organisation, all of ZBGC trainings and workshops are created and delivered by members of the TGD community.
Released in February 2026, Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices is a national strategy to end family, domestic and sexual violence against First Nations women and children.
Released in February 2026, this is the seventh annual report on how Victoria is putting the Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management (MARAM) Framework into action for 2024-25.
On 3rd February 2026 our Chair and Principal Strategic Advisor made a submission to the Department of Justice and Community Safety’s rapid review of Victoria’s firearms laws. Our submission reflected how firearms operate as a distinct and foreseeable risk factor in domestic contexts. While many firearms policy discussions focus on public or criminal misuse, our submission centred the everyday, private settings in which firearms significantly increase harm, fear and lethality for victim-survivors.
Drawing on consultation with Partnership members, our submission highlighted consistent practice-based evidence that firearms fundamentally alter the dynamics of family and sexual violence. Firearms increase lethality, intensify coercive control and threats, and deepen victim-survivors’ fear, entrapment and reluctance to report or leave violence. The presence of firearms, even without use, escalates risk and extends harm, including post-separation.
Read the submission here:
Today we ran our fourth ‘Coffee with a Cop’ – a coffee of the virtual kind! These online sessions are a collaborative initiative of Victoria Police and the BPIFVP, providing professionals from the Bayside Peninsula the opportunity to hear directly from police members about their family violence training, policy and processes, and experiences responding to incidents.
Our focus in today’s session was on Victoria Police’s “Identifying the predominant aggressor” training, followed by a 30-minute Q&A session that gave participants the opportunity to ask police questions directly across a range of topics.
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On 30th January 2026 and on behalf of the Partnership, our Chair and Principal Strategic Advisor provided a submission to the national House Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs’ Inquiry into the relationship between domestic, family and sexual violence and suicide. Our submission was informed by the collective insights of specialist family violence services, mental health and alcohol and other drug practitioners, and lived experience advisors. It drew on frontline practice, system-level observations, and lived experience expertise to examine how domestic, family and sexual violence, particularly coercive control, contributes to suicide risk and incidence.
Read the submission here
This year, Victoria Police partnered with Bayside Peninsula Integrated Family Violence Partnership to develop a more collaborative approach to responding to family violence incidents. The partnership enabled discussions between key organisations in the family violence sector, including through facilitated workshops held throughout the year.
The main goal of the partnership has been to better understand how community service sector organisations and Victoria Police can work together to support victims. Senior Sergeant Duncan Bartley – one of our Family Violence Training Officers – says the only way we can effectively prevent, respond and recover from family violence is to work collaboratively.
“We all want the same outcomes – for victim-survivors to be safe and have the opportunity to live free from violence, and for perpetrators to be held to account.”
“Feedback from representatives across the organisations has been overwhelmingly positive, with many commenting on the benefit of having a deeper insight into how Victoria Police functions and where opportunities present for greater collaboration.
The response from participants has been overwhelmingly positive, with many grateful for gaining a deeper insight into how Victoria Police work across the family violence space.
View the Facebook post here
Imagine having prevention funded at the scale of the problem. What a great quote from the panel at Big Hart’s screening of It Starts with Us.
We need to collectively advocate for increased funding in prevention and early intervention. And to specifically fund fantastic programs like those run by Big hART because the impact is real. Just ask any of the young people involved with It Starts with Us.
On Thursday, 27th November 2025 the BPIFVP’s PSA, Administrator, Lived Experience Advisor, and one of our members all attended RMIT’s forum in Melbourne. Some were participants and others presenters, but we all took away so much about reflections on the last nine years since the RCFV.
RMIT runs a Graduate Certificate in Family & Domestic Violence that may be suitable for you or your staff.
One of our gifts at the BPIFVP Networking Expo in November was Conor’s book The Shadow that Follows.
Purchase a copy today for your family, local primary school, or for your clients.