The dedicated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan will work alongside the First Action Plan. It has been developed in genuine partnership with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council on family, domestic and sexual violence, and in recognition of the disproportionately high rates of family, domestic and sexual violence that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience.
Click here to read Action Plan
This article examines the nature of risks and how they are experienced and challenged, through a case study analysis of the implementation of the Australian state of Victoria’s Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council. Analysing government reports and interviews with survivors and policymakers, the article investigates how the state asserts control over survivors under the guise of co-production, inadvertently compromising public value creation.
The Children’s Voices for Change project is seeking children and young people aged 10 to 25, who have lived experience of family violence, to take part in an online activity.
This project is being led by Southern Cross University, in partnership with Safe and Equal and the Centre for Excellence in Child & Family Welfare.
It is funded as part of the Victorian Government’s Family Violence Research Agenda 2021-2024.
The research project seeks to understand what constitutes effective supports for children and young people as victim-survivors of family violence in their own right.
This stage of the project involves research with children and young people with lived experience of family violence, through an anonymous, interactive online activity. This phase has been approved by Southern Cross University’s Human Research Ethics Committee (approval no. 2023/115).
The project is recruiting children and young people who:
- are 10 to 25 years old; and
- have experience accessing family violence support services in Victoria when they were up to 13 years old; and
- have an established relationship with a service or network; and
- are not currently in distress or crisis.
If you can help with identifying potential participants who meet these criteria, please share this opportunity. The online activity will be open until Friday 18 August.
Click here for more information about the project
CHCDFV001 Recognise and respond appropriately to domestic and family violence
Build your skills and confidence to identify and respond to family violence during professional contact with clients who may be experiencing domestic and family violence.
By the end of this course, you will gain the knowledge and skills to:
- Identify and respond to the needs of clients affected by family violence according to legal and ethical requirements
- Effectively engage with clients affected by family violence by demonstrating interpersonal skills that develop rapport
- Assess family violence risk and employ risk management strategies including safety planning and referrals
This unit is recognised as a core unit for CHC52021 Diploma of Community Services (responding to Family Violence (Child, youth and family Welfare) (Social Housing) (Case management)).
The full fee for CHCDFV001 is $1495 ($95 Admin fee, $1400 Course fee). Safe and Equal full members receive 25% discount: $1120 ($70 Admin fee, $1050 Course fee). The waitlist for our upcoming cohort (running from October to December) is now open.
Please contact the Safe and Equal team at [email protected] if you have any questions about the CHCDFV001 course.
Click here to join the waitlist
The Department of Health has published a new factsheet for health professionals with advice about secondary consultations and referrals under the Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management (MARAM) Framework.
Anyone that works in a health service can seek advice and support about how to recognise and respond to family violence via a secondary consultation. You can also get advice about making a referral to get the right support for a person you may be working with. The factsheet includes:
- how a secondary consultation can assist you
- who you can seek a secondary consultation with
- advice about making referrals
- advice on consent
The factsheet can be found on the Department of Health family violence webpage along with other resources about MARAM and information sharing.
Specialist family services workers have complex and significant workloads to service demand and may experience stressors through their service delivery. We recognise and strongly support that workforce wellbeing is an organisational responsibility.
There are several initiatives currently underway that seek to support the specialist family violence services to promote and protect the health, safety and wellbeing of their staff.
Resources:
Family Safety Victoria published an online Family Violence Health, Safety and Wellbeing Guide with links to Safe and Equal’s Self-assessment Handbook and Tool
Both Safe and Equal’s Health, Safety and Wellbeing handbook and self-assessment tool is a benchmarking resource, that guides service providers through a self-audit activity in order to determine their start point and create an action plan for improvement across the whole organisation.
After consultation with the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department on the new specialised trauma-informed legal services pilot for victims and survivors of sexual assault, Health Justice Australia was invited to make a submission to the design process.
You can read Health Justice Australia’s submission here, including their recommendations for flexibility in funding and design, and outcome measurement.
From 3 July, the Australian Government will boost the financial assistance available to temporary visa holders experiencing family and domestic violence from the current $3000 to $5000. The Government has committed $4.4 million over two years for the increase which is expected to assist up to 2000 people nationally. The funding is in addition to the $38.2 million committed to extend the Temporary Visa Holders Experiencing Violence Pilot and Escaping Violence Payment trial to 31 January 2025.
Six new research projects are being funded under the latest round of the Andrews Labor Government’s Family Violence Research Program, helping to develop innovative solutions to respond to family violence.
Minister for Prevention of Family Violence Ros Spence has announced the new projects, which are part of a $1.2 million package to help build an evidence base for best practice family violence interventions, service delivery and innovation leading to better outcomes for victim survivors.
The investment builds on the $2.5 million already provided under Phase 1 of the program in 2022.
Research topics for Phase 2 address evidence gaps in priority research topics – including children and young people, multicultural communities and embedding lived experience in research.
“The tendency of family courts to dismiss the history of domestic violence and abuse in custody cases, especially where mothers and/or children have brought forward credible allegations of domestic abuse, including coercive control, physical or sexual abuse is unacceptable,” said Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, in a report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Thursday.
A history of intimate partner violence against women was often neglected in family courts and shared custody or parental authority, treated as the default ruling, regardless of the child’s perspective.
“When custody decisions are made in favour of the parent who claims to be alienated without sufficiently considering the views of the child, the resilience of the concerned child may be undermined.
“The child may also continue to be exposed to lasting harm,” Ms. Alsalem said. She also called out the failure of child custody processes to use child sensitive approaches that focus on the best interest of children.