Advocate - Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria · 2019. 12. 19. · DVRCV Advocate | April 2018 Victoria’s industry magazine providing news, interviews, articles and expert

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Victoria’s industry magazine providing news, interviews, articles and expert review for family violence specialists, prevention practitioners and allied professionals working to prevent and respond to women and children experiencing family violence.

Advocate

Where child protection and family violence services meet

Voices of the sector

Responding to family violence in the LGBTQI community

Perspectives

Prevention action plan: Infrastructure, coordination, investment

Prevention

CNV demonstrate integrated practice in action

Organisation spotlight

Meet Julie: family violence case manager and proud Wurundjeri woman

Profile

Examining the state government’s vision for the family violence sector

Building From Strength: Ten-Year Industry Plan For Family Violence Prevention and Response

DVRCV Family Violence Training 2018Response Training Prevention Training

Learn with Victoria’s only Registered Training Organisation (RTO) whose trainers come with direct service family violence experience.

Leadership for preventing violence against women

Respectful relationships: the whole school approach

Bystander action in the workplace

Sexual education by pornography

CHCDFV001 Recognise and respond appropriately to domestic and family violence

CHCDFV002 Provide support to children affected by domestic and family violence

The Common Risk Assessment Framework (CRAF)

Visit www.dvrcv.org.au today

DVRCV’s AdvocateEditorial Group: Emily Maguire, Shari Davies, Nicola Harte. Contributors: Belinda, Britt, Kate, Julie, Krysia, Maryclare, Emily Maguire, Cheryl, Krista Seddon. Print: BluePrint Distribution: Mail Pro Australia.

The opinions expressed in the Advocate are those of individual authors and not necessarily the view of DVRCV. Permission must be obtained prior to reproducing any of the content herein. © Copyright DVRCV 2018.

About DVRCVThe Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria (DVRCV) is one of the state’s most expert sources of information and training on family violence and the prevention of violence against women. We are a not-for-profit incorporated association and registered training organisation that operates across Victoria and is funded by the Department of Health and Human Services with additional income from other government departments, grants and donations. ABN 31 202 397 579 ISSN 2206-0065 (Print) RTO 20853

DVRCV acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we work, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation and pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. DVRCV acknowledges that sovereignty of this land was never ceded and is committed to honouring Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in our work.

Identifying family violence and risk assessment

Digital safety, family violence and risk assessment

Family violence training for supervisors

Adopting child - led practice

Infants and toddlers - addressing relational trauma

Family violence is a workplace issue

Case notes and the law

Working with fathers

Wellbeing, self-care and worker sustainability

NEW:

Register today for one of our newly developed prevention of violence against women workshops NEW:

Trauma informed practice

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DVRCV Advocate | April 2018

DVRCV’s focus:

We were talking in the office recently about what it takes to manage complex change, and we started to identify just how many parallels there are between our own organisational-level change and system-level changes that the entire sector is experiencing. The Advocate magazine for example, in its recent transformation and relaunch, offered a useful analogy to explore what is essential for successful change.

Changing the Advocate: An Analogy

Once we’d articulated our vision for the Advocate, what quickly became obvious is that I’m not an expert on redesigning a magazine. Even though the responsibility for realising our organisational vision is mine, it’s not up to me to make every decision about how to do things – it’s smarter if I leave the expertise up to the experts, so when it came to relaunching a new version of the Advocate, I had to ask others involved: ‘How are we going to get this done?’

The second thing that became clear was the importance of knowing which expert to ask about what, and when. Redeveloping a magazine requires the orchestration of many – communications specialists, writers, designers, artists, editors, printers, distributors, not to mention the content experts – family violence and prevention

practitioners who work in the field. Any conversation with different experts come with a different context, and that needs to be clearly understood when giving or taking advice.

Conversation MattersThere’s little controversy in the statement: Change is difficult. Even at the micro-level of transforming an industry magazine, it’s challenging. To change entire systems at statewide level is a vast and complex task, and one that hundreds of people across Victoria are working through as we speak.

In the process of system reform, it’s the community sector’s job to advise the government of the day to support them to make the best, evidence informed and practice relevant decision possible. Therefore, our ability to advise and transfer knowledge is as essential as government’s ability to listen and try to engage with the complexity of practice.

It takes vision, accountability, leadership, collaboration and the ability to let go. Progress is made via conversations, and those conversations can be difficult and sometimes confronting. It’s hard to listen, interrogate, engage and be willing to have your mind changed. An authentic, frank and fearless conversation takes courage and trust.

We are in an era of unprecedented, once-in-a-generation change. There are complex political, economic, cultural, social layers and the conversations that guide our government’s best foot forward are crucial. That sounds overwhelming but it is achievable. We – as an organisation and as a sector – are already starting to change; the mere fact that these conversations are taking place demonstrate change. But in the midst of these conversations, should it begin to get bogged down, derailed or become too polarised, we should stop and ask each other: what is the one thing we all want? Are we making decisions that will achieve that? If so, how? If not, who at the table has the specific, specialist experience and knowledge needed to provide the right advice on the issue at hand?

If every one of us at the table, from government ministers to community sector practitioners, are able to make ourselves accountable to the one change we are all trying to achieve, then our conversations will be embedded with the kind of fearless advice and open listening we need in order to reach a future in which all women and children are free from violence.

Emily Maguire | Chief Executive Officer

The importance of conversation While working as a team on this issue of the Advocate magazine, we identified one of the key ingredients to successful change is the conversations we have, particularly when consulting with a multitude of different experts, all sitting at the one table.

It’s difficult to listen, interrogate, engage and be willing to have your mind changed.

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Profile:

Julie: intensive family violence case manager, Traditional Owner and proud Wurundjeri woman

Describe your role at Eastern Domestic Violence Service

I work with Aboriginal women who are experiencing family violence. I work in the intensive case management team which covers any woman who is at high risk of fatality, not just Aboriginal women.

I raise awareness with other organisations about family violence in Aboriginal communities as well as strengthening connections through Aboriginal network meetings.

I also ensure EDVOS supports cultural inclusivity by doing things like recognising significant days for Aboriginal people and installing a plaque acknowledging the Traditional Owners.

Do your upbringing and life experiences inform your work?

Being a Traditional Owner makes it a lot easier. I can perform Welcome to Country, I know the correct protocols and I can refer to the appropriate local services. They’re passed from generation to generation, I learned through my mum and grandmother, and other elders in the community.

What do you do to help you after a particularly challenging work week?

My workplace offers yoga once a week. I exercise, keep myself healthy, meditate, that really helps because you go home with things on your mind the whole time. My team debriefs about our clients every morning so that it doesn’t build up by the end of the week. It really helps to talk with colleagues because you can’t talk about it at home.

Who influenced you the most growing up?

My mother. She’s a strong Wurundjeri woman. She was my role model, I looked up to her. She was always helping people, guiding me through life. And my grandmother, as well.

Can you share a story of a client that filled you with hope?

One client with MS has experienced significant family violence, she’s lost everything. She’s homeless but safe steps have put her in a hotel. She’s not very mobile and stays connected with friends and family through Facebook.

The perpetrator took her iPad because he knows how important it is to her. We were able to buy an iPad and a phone using the Flexible Support Package. Just buying those things was really important to her. I was able to set up security for another unsafe client. We got her a safety watch with a button that immediately dials 000. Twice he’s been at the front door and she’s pressed the button and the police have arrived. She said that’s helped her sense of relief from danger. Stories like that show there is hope.

You’ve been doing this work for years, does it seem different now?

You can do more things to help the women escape; private rental brokerage money to establish women and stay in their home, money to fix the car to get the kids to school. The government has realised you need some money sometimes to help with small things.

What would your ideal family violence service look like?

An ideal family violence service would be a one-stop-shop, and it would provide outreach services too. I had to meet a client at Boorndawan last week because she lived too far away. Not everyone has a car so if it’s safe we go out and see them in their environment or meet them somewhere.

What’s the ideal system for this ideal family violence service?

Housing is in crisis. Take the woman in the motel room, for example – there’s no housing for her. The Andrews government is putting more money into housing; there are twenty

new properties scheduled for the inner city. But yes, women need somewhere to live and not be stuck in a motel or a refuge. A refuge keeps you safe but it’s not always ideal.

What advice would you give about how to provide culturally safe responses to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people?

Understand intergenerational trauma, don’t be judgemental. You need to understand the history to be able to understand the woman. For example, she’s not going to give up her kids because she might have been given up as a child. Try to understand how lost you might feel growing up with parents from the Stolen Generation who lost their culture and identity.

Understand the importance of their connection to the land, to culture. Aboriginal people didn’t have rights to vote until 1967 so understand that too. My mum didn’t have the right to vote, to access education.

How would you say that lived experience impacts on individual clients?

There was a lot of teasing growing up as an Aboriginal person. You mightn’t have had a good start in life because Aboriginal people were really looked down on; you couldn’t use a lot of services. They weren’t citizens, so they didn’t have rights. A lot of our people are married to non-Aboriginal people so – even though it’s not part of our culture – the family violence was significant. And it was worse because the police didn’t step in then, so you might have experienced a lot of family violence when you were young.

What would you say to other people coming into the sector and aspiring to have a role like yours?

Go for it! There’s great training available and supports to help women escape the violence including commitment from police to hold men accountable. It’s a great job and you will be making a difference in Aboriginal women and children’s lives. ■

Julie is a Wurundjeri woman who advocates for Aboriginal women’s rights through her work supporting Aboriginal women experiencing family violence. She carries the strength of her family, Country and her culture with her, giving her the strength and capacity for leadership through community health and wellbeing.

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The Eastern Domestic Violence Service (EDVOS) is a specialist family violence service for women and their children who are currently living with or have experienced family and domestic violence.

www.edvos.org.au

You need to understand the history to be able to understand the woman... she’s not going to give up her kids because she might have been given up as a child...

• Consult with the Traditional Owners in your area

• Listen to the stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

• Celebrate and recognise significant days including National Sorry Day, NAIDOC Week, National Reconciliation Week

• Physical acknowledgements can signal a warm welcome e.g. prominently display Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags and a plaque acknowledging the Traditional Owners

• Include an Acknowledgement of Country on website, email signatures and publications

• Establish protocols for Acknowledgement of Country and Welcome to Country for events and meetings

• Seek cultural guidance including cultural awareness and safety training

• Strengthen connections with the Aboriginal community in your area by attending events, building partnerships with Elders, individuals and community controlled organisations

• Develop a Reconciliation Action Plan

• Employ Aboriginal workers

HOW TO CREATE A CULTURALLY SAFE WORKPLACE FOR ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER PEOPLE

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other women does. There’s this underlying idea of, “But you just help people don’t you? Surely it doesn’t matter what you get paid?” Or it could even be the undervaluing of the complex set of skills that are needed just to work in this sector.

The other crucial thing I’d recommend is self-awareness. Whenever I do training in self-care, I ask, “What are three things that nourish you, that nurture you, that puts the fuel back in your tank?”

The other part of knowing yourself is knowing what kind of role makes it feel like you’re making a difference. What sort of work makes it possible for you to get some traction?

For example, some people are more suited to crisis intervention, some are better at long-term case management, some are good at strategy and some people are good at supporting staff. Finding the right role is challenging and it may change depending on where you are in your life, but the right role for your strengths will go a long way in producing that feeling of ‘Something is changing because I do this’.

How do you question the concept of self-care?

Self-care in the workplace has become overly focused on the individual: the notion that you are responsible for your self-care implies that if you’re not managing, then you must be doing something wrong. But a feminist view of self-care includes the crucial consideration of context.

Caring for yourself as a professional is a joint act shared by you and your workplace. You do have to take responsibility for yourself, but you also need support. We should be moving towards understanding this concept as ‘worker sustainability and wellbeing’, which shifts the focus to a dual responsibility, and allows a broader understanding of the context in which the work is carried out.

What is the importance of valuing yourself and your work?

I think people are doing amazingly well but I think they need help. The first step is to change the old thinking that self-care is about individual workers who can either hack the job or can’t.

And we have to think about it from a political standpoint. Where does the idea come from that you put yourself last? It comes from that idea of what a mother is, what a good woman is and a woman who works to help

How is systemic change relevant to self care?

It’s about understanding how your work fits into a larger movement of change. Doing this work can feel overwhelming at times which is an appropriate response to an overwhelming system. So when you break it down to what you can achieve in your role, what’s within your role and what’s outside of it, this assists managing the frustrations of a system with many limitations.

A worker could do a thorough risk assessment, but then come up against a system that says, “Sorry, she doesn’t meet our criteria, she can’t go into refuge”.

What can you do when facing something as enormous as systemic change?

Talk to your manager so they can advocate at their level and find colleagues who share your concerns. Learn how to do systemic advocacy alongside individual advocacy, or support others who are already doing that.

Understanding your role in the broader system helps to alleviate the sense of being powerless and reminds you that you are part of a broader movement; you’re not alone. It’s essential to remember that. ■

The conversation:

Self-care: It’s not up to you aloneWe’d like to have an ongoing conversation about the challenges unique to working in the family violence sector and ask workers how they think about and practice self-care. This regular feature is an opportunity to bring those different points of view to life, and share them across the sector.

In this issue we discussed the concept of self-care with DVRCV’s own Belinda Bannerman, senior trainer in practice and response. Belinda has over 17 years’ direct experience working with victim/survivors of family violence and now designs and delivers family violence training, including training on self-care.

Belinda continues our conversation by interrogating some of the assumptions surrounding self-care and re-framing the entire concept.

NEW TRAINING: WELLBEING, SELF-CARE & SUSTAINABILITY

In response to our training survey, DVRCV created training dedicated to self-care and wellbeing for people working in the family violence sector. Visit our website for dates and locationswww.dvrcv.org.au

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What are the challenges unique to LGBTQI people experiencing family violence?

KF: Queer people often have to argue against people stereotyping them even while seeking help so there are two types of pressure with family/intimate partner violence, the situation they’re in and just being queer in the world, those two things come together in a painful and sometimes dangerous ways.

In the queer community there’s family violence and intimate partner violence but there’s also lateral violence. ‘Callout culture’ is one example; callouts on social media where people will be publicly shamed and their reputations damaged.

MM: Callout culture is an accountability mechanism developed from transformative justice where the community holds each other to account. As younger people we were called to account but it took longer. Now, through social media, it’s instant and goes so far.

KF: So those are things that some of our clients are dealing with. QRespect responds to our clients where those points of pressure meet; what’s happening in the relationship/s, what’s happening in the world and what’s happening in the community.

MM: LGBTQI+ covers a huge range of experiences too; the L and the G and the B and the I and the T and the Q all bring their own experiences. drummond street, and queerspace, is a family service but the definition of family is a very broad. Every individual has a family whether it’s a family of origin or a family of choice.

KF: Reinventing family is a very strong function in queer communities. Family of choice can involve people who are having children together, households of young people coming together to form community, sometimes in the context of alienation from their family of origin. This is important when considering family violence because we may be speaking about a different form of family: people with several partners, children with two couples as parents, for example.

How does intersectionality operate in practice in prevention and response? What is currently being done?

KF: The question of cultural knowledge is really important in applying intersectionality to prevention. It can’t just be an add-on, but has to be at the core of the thinking in both preventing family violence and responding to it. At the state government level, Family Safety Victoria (FSV) is consulting with the queer community on a campaign that starts from the basis of diversity.

MM: At a practitioner level it’s important to set aside any preconceptions and just be open to what’s in front of you, so that you don’t miss anything that seems unimportant to you but is of huge importance to them.

What is needed to collaborate with other stakeholders? What are the gaps?

KF: We’re working in a very fast environment but we need to recognise that there’s a huge amount of work and time involved in good collaboration. Diverse representation is step one but then you need to align practices, work out who does what well, and how we learn from each other, and how to foster solidarity. There will be tension involved because the purpose of the partnership is about creating new stakes.

Will the Rainbow Tick enable family violence services to respond better?

KF: FSV funded 19 services to complete the Rainbow Tick accreditation. Specialist family violence services undergoing the Rainbow Tick can use our training as evidence of their intention to become a queer affirmative service but it’s not linked in a formal sense.

Our aim is to build on decades of experience and practice knowledge about how to recognise and act on family violence and expand the capacity of mainstream services to recognise and respond to people who do not identify as heterosexual. ■

queerspace* (drummond street services) is a health and wellbeing service for LGBTQI+ people, and their families. QRespect is queerspace’s queer intimate partner violence and family violence service, working with individuals, families and couples/partners. We spoke to Kate and Maryclare from queerspace about the experience of family violence in LGBTQI relationships.

The LGBTQI experience of family violence

Perspectives:

*This article uses the term ‘queer’ because it covers a program called ‘queerspace’. The word ‘queer’ was historically used as a slur, but since the 1980s ‘queer’ has been reclaimed by some as an all-inclusive term, distinct from ‘gay’. This article uses ‘queer’ in that way.

iHEAL RECOVERY

iHeal Recovery is a free service for women and children, especially those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, LGBTQI+ community or with a disability, who have experienced family violence. The team have lived experience with family violence and provides counselling, help navigating services, support groups and recovery education. Access iHeal through drummond street, Victorian Aids Council and Merri Health.

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The Plan’s vision is one in which effective support is orchestrated across multiple workforces and adapted to the individual needs of every woman and child who experiences family violence across the lifespan of their experience, while the perpetrators are kept in clear sight and held to account. The Plan also envisages that primary prevention will also be coordinated alongside these efforts.

The vision is ambitious in scope (and it should be, given the immensity of family violence and the reach and depth of primary prevention required to ‘turn off the tap’). Visions are by their nature high-level, yet still it begs the question: how do we build a workforce for a service system that is still being designed?

Some detail will be provided by the document’s subsequent three-year rolling action plans (the first of which is expected in May), but there are considerable challenges ahead to realise this vision, all of which will need not just long-term planning but short- and medium-term strategies, implemented sequentially to meet our immediate needs and still set us up for long-term success.

Looking ahead

A central premise of Building from Strength is that in order for the state to respond to and prevent family violence we will not only need a larger workforce, but also the orchestrated efforts of several vastly different professional sectors, all equipped to prevent and respond to all forms of family violence in a coordinated way.

But how do we build a workforce when we are yet to develop a shared understanding of the skills that workforce will need, with a prevention sector in its infancy and with skill sets that are hard to predict in three years, let alone ten?

Engaging and training new sectors

Training workers from new sectors will be challenging when they are only peripherally engaged with the family violence reforms

and the impacts of these on their workforce. Last year, Family Safety Victoria conducted the first census of the Victorian workforces that intersect with family violence, revealing the education and training sector were least likely to consider family violence training as necessary, followed by those working in the health and justice. While this is not surprising – family violence has been hidden and the sole remit of the tiny specialist response system for decades – it is concerning that despite a Royal Commission, these workforces are yet to understand just how critical they are in supporting victim survivors and holding perpetrators to account.

This brings us to a crucial absence of data. Professor David Hayward from the VCOSS-RMIT Future Social Service Institute describes how this plan is markedly different from most other industry plans:

“Building from Strength is oddly wedged between two different processes, the Royal Commission into Family Violence, and an enormous amount of sector consultation, all while trying to achieve tight deadlines before the next election. Along with that, we have such little data on the family violence sector that there are bound to be some gaps.”

Feature:

Building from Strength: a bold vision for the family violence workforce of the futureIn December last year, the Special Minister of State, the Honourable Gavin Jennings MLC launched the Victorian Government’s 10-year plan for Victoria’s future family violence workforce, in response to a key recommendation of the Royal Commission into Family Violence.

Building from Strength: 10-Year Industry Plan for Family Violence Prevention and Response (the Plan) is a vision of how to equip a range of different workforces with the expertise and resources to support Victorians impacted by family violence and to prevent it from occurring in the first place.

How do we build a workforce when we are still yet to have a shared understanding of what skills that workforce will need?

CAPABILITIES FRAMEWORKS

A clear articulation of skills and knowledge needed is the first step to building workforce capabilities. Family Safety Victoria’s Centre for Workforce Excellence collaborated with DVRCV, Our Watch and Women’s Health Victoria to develop the Preventing Family Violence and Violence Against Women Capability Framework, to outline the skills needed to deliver prevention of violence against women and with DV Vic, No to Violence and the Centre Against Sexual Assault on the Responding to Family Violence Capability Framework, for a range of professionals who have contact with victim survivors, children and young people and perpetrators of family violence.

From the Census of Workforces that Intersect with Family Violence, Companion report to Building from Strength: 10-Year Industry Plan for Family Violence Prevention and Response. December 2017, Family Safety Victoria.

EDUCATIONJUSTICE HEALTH

27%39% 43%

PROPORTION OF PROFESSIONALS WHO CONSIDER FAMILY VIOLENCE TRAINING NECESSARY TO PERFORM THEIR ROLE

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However, Professor Hayward is still optimistic about the plan. “It is a highly ambitious plan, but it is imbued with great hope and goodwill between the government and the family violence and other community sectors, which is something new. It will take patience and encouragement to see it through.”

“We have never had a detailed and complex industry plan like this in the community sector before. This (tragically) wasn’t done for the disability or the aged care sectors, so it’s an enormous achievement, and it was only possible thanks to the considerable efforts of a group of key women.”

Guidance from experienced family violence workers

With so much demand on family violence services, it’s time to start considering how to best utilise these highly expert specialists and their extensive practice knowledge.

The family violence workers and early prevention practitioners are the key to expanding the workforce and increasing the capacity of others to prevent and respond effectively to family violence, and it is their advice that the government, industry leaders and professionals should heed. Having said that, we run the risk of burdening an already overwhelmed group of experts even further, so that guidance needs to inform the training and education capacity of larger institutions.

Professor Hayward agrees, “It needs to be set up so that the family violence sector guides universities, and not the other way around.”

The tertiary, vocational and community sectors will need to be willing to innovate. We’ll need creative and flexible approaches to fast-tracking people through the necessary education (such as micro-credentialing, work placements and recognising prior capabilities) so we can meet workforce demand without compromising on the training and education professionals need to reduce risks to women and children and hold perpetrators to account for the violence they chose to commit.

Courage to approach the present and the future differently

The solution to solving skills gaps and building an effective workforce is more than just training, and while this is acknowledged in the Industry Plan, real courage will be needed from the government, community organisations and the tertiary sector to design an implementation strategy that will tackle these issues in a staged, strategic and coordinated way.

The first step to building capability across workforces is a clear articulation of the skills and knowledge that are needed, such as the prevention and response capability frameworks that DVRCV collaborated on with other agencies to develop last year. Professional development needs to be available in more

than just face-to-face training and with a focus on the new integrated family violence system. Any strategies must also recognise that the effectiveness of a workforce is influenced by more than the individuals themselves.

Looking at our future workforce from an ecological point of view would reveal what infrastructure will be needed. What leadership and management skills will be embedded in our workplaces to support the professionals doing the work? What policies will be in place to ensure that the necessary gender and family violence lens is being applied? And whether it’s IT systems, human resources or recruitment, what infrastructure will ensure new skills, knowledge and practice will be applied?

Most vitally, we need to acknowledge and have a strategy for the communities who face greater barriers to gaining qualifications and joining the workforce, whether that’s people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, people with disabilities, people who are carers, women who have children or women who are getting older.

Where to from here

The government has made considerable efforts in consulting with the sector to co-design this plan, but in real terms there is limited scope to what a state government can mandate, which means the success of how Victoria prevents violence against women or responds to family violence will depend on what short and medium-term strategies we come up with to fill the gaps, on the partnerships we forge with each other and on how well we listen to the professional, expert and experienced women who have been working in family violence for decades.

To ensure Victoria is able to achieve the vision set out in Building from Strength, we need every profession and sector to recognise that preventing and responding to family violence is a core part of their business, and that we all have a responsibility to achieving this change. ■

Family violence and prevention practitioners are the key to expanding the workforce and increasing the capacity of others to prevent and respond effectively to family violence

LEARNING FROM THE EDUCATION CENTRE AGAINST VIOLENCE DVRCV recently looked into the work of the Education Centre Against Violence (ECAV), NSW to learn from their model. ECAV are funded by the NSW Department of Health primarily to build the capacity of the health workforce by providing flexible options and delivery in terms of gaining qualifications, a broad scope of training across family violence, sexual assault, working with perpetrators, working with children and young people and they have high-quality qualification programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Victoria’s experienced family violence workers need to be the expert voices that guide any family violence-related education provided by universities, TAFEs and training organisations.

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KRYSIA: My role was to provide Child Protection with specialist advice about family violence dynamics: how it presents, the impacts and navigating the service system. I’m a Berry Street worker who was placed at Child Protection four days a week to meet with workers and support their work with families. Family violence informed practice understands family violence as a pattern of coercive control that permeates through every aspect of their life and holding that framework in being mindful in how you speak with the woman, present matters to court and speak with your manager. The priority is on the children and the protective parent staying together with as little disruption as possible.

How did you learn about children and children’s risk?

I learned about it in my social work degree and student placement in Child Protection. Since then I’ve learned on the job and through professional development and conferences. We frame the perpetrator’s pattern of behaviour as a parenting choice rather than an intimate partner relationship choice.

How did you understand the Child Protection response?

Child Protection acts in an urgent space. Cumulative harm is a relatively recent concern for Child Protection, yet it is one of the most impactful harms on a child. The threat or presence of physical violence is seriously

concerning, but the cumulative effect of family violence on the child’s cognition, social abilities and bodily functions are almost indescribable to a Magistrate.

Did the role shift your practice?

It changed the way I present information to Child Protection. Now I understand what they’re looking for and I’m explicit about how we view the risk and support the woman. I also explain Child Protection to women differently; the steps, systems and decision making can reduce some of the fear their children will be removed.

Where was the tension in this case?

The tensions in this case were similar to those across many situations where our services work together. Unlike Child Protection, family violence services are voluntary; if a woman chooses to disengage, we respect her choice. Child Protection practitioners often wonder why we don’t try harder to reach a woman but she’ll engage in the service when she feels it’s appropriate because she’s the expert in her life. In this case, the Children’s Court ordered the woman to engage with a family violence service, making it mandatory.

One key practice shift that needs to transfer into policy is that working with the parent is good for the children. Child Protection work for the children and we work for the mother and the children together. The protective parent is absolutely the best person to look after their children; working with the adult in their life is just as important as working with the children.

Voices of the sector:

How child protection and family violence works together The Royal Commission into Family Violence recommended co-locating a specialist family violence worker within Child Protection to support workers to consider family violence as part of their risk assessment. The first question this posed in people’s minds was, how will Child protection and family violence workers collaborate using different frameworks? We interviewed Britt (Child Protection) and Krysia (specialist family violence support) to ask how they collaborated on a case in this way, and made sure women and children were supported and the perpetrator was held to account in the one family.

FAMILY VIOLENCE DYNAMICS

STATUTORYCONDITIONS

It was really beneficial having Krysia located in Child Protection; she made a bridge between the statutory entity and the community services.

THE CASE STUDY

A father was perpetrating family violence for a number of years. Child Protection assessed the mother as responsible for harm by failing to protect the three children from their father’s violence. The perpetrator was excluded from the address by an intervention order (IO) but Child Protection determined it wasn’t safe for the mother and kids to stay as she wasn’t on the lease. She was distressed because Child Protection told her to take the children to her mother’s house or they’d be removed. They moved in with the children’s grandmother in an overcrowded house, isolated and destitute. The children showed emotional behavioural concerns resulting from the instability of being moving and their father’s presence / absence in their life.

The perpetrator didn’t breach the order while the victim survivor was at her mother’s house. Safety had been established. The mother and children returned to the family home as there were adequate supports in the community, ongoing Child Protection monitoring and liaison with police to ensure IO breaches were reported and pursued in a criminal manner. The woman engaged in services and reported feeling more empowered, financially stable and able to pay the rent without his support, which she’d identified as a reason for returning to the relationship in the past. The perpetrator took responsibility for his actions by participating in the Caring Dads program.

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The Family Law Court often place too much value on a violent parent’s right to see their children rather than the negative impact that seeing a violent parent has on a child.

What conversations did you have together?

A key part of my role was developing a shared understanding. As mentioned, family violence services are voluntary, Child Protection is statutory. We work differently but the two services have empathy for how each operates and why.

In this instance, I looked into different housing options and told Britt what was available; I supported her to frame the woman’s strengths to her managers. I found that Child Protection held a view that the victim survivor could breach her own order by being around the perpetrator but the responsibility falls on him. Britt worked with management on their views of the woman’s safety, strengths and who was responsible for the risk.

How did you avoid collusive practices with perpetrators?

I supported Britt in how to avoid collusion in the way that she spoke with the perpetrator, the opportunities she gave him and how to hold him accountable, particularly in framing the court report.

When you speak with a perpetrator there needs to be an explicit purpose. You mustn’t provide him with information that can escalate the woman’s risk so you always hold the woman and children in the forefront of your mind.

BRITT:

When I first started working in Child Protection, my knowledge of family violence came from my social work degree, training in previous roles and external organisations. Child Protection is set up to combat child abuse and neglect, not family violence, but we’re starting to see a paradigm shift.

How did you understand it?

I had a good understanding of family violence theory but not how to incorporate it into Child Protection practice, especially when holding the perpetrator accountable. Child Protection cases often charge the woman with responsibility for mitigating the risk, rather than holding the perpetrator accountable for his actions.

Who did you engage with?

My engagement with Krysia came from her explaining the new role and the benefits. This family was in a difficult situation. Child Protection didn’t have clear policies on how to work with family violence, so I consulted her to find out about services the mother could access to gain stability and how to hold the perpetrator accountable.

What did you do?

In Child Protection the onus is really on the woman to find services herself; Krysia’s role supported me to explore the range of services for the woman.

The biggest barrier was that mum wanted to return home but Child Protection didn’t want that until safety requirements were in place. She was in limbo with a stable house that was deemed unsafe and an inability to transfer the lease into her name.

We couldn’t resolve those barriers without Child Protection changing their assessment. Part of the evidence we presented to support the change in assessment was highlighting mum’s strengths, her proactivity and fantastic care of the kids despite their experience of family violence, which she had no control over.

Did working with Krysia shift your practice in Child Protection?

It encouraged a strengths-based, feminist approach even while working in Child Protection. It also supported me to become more confident in challenging my superiors when it came to decision-making. In a statutory role you’re expected to be an expert, but this role supported me to become a more collaborative practitioner.

Where was the point of tension?

Child Protection uses the best interests of the child case practice model which clashes with the feminist framework specialist family violence services use.

In this case, Child Protection decided the children would be safe at their grandmother’s house because they were less likely to witness family violence, but they were completely unstable; sleeping in the lounge room with their mother, far from their school and isolated.

Also, the perpetrator took no responsibility for his use of violence and yet the Children’s Court ordered him to have contact with the children once a week, privileging his right to contact with the child despite the best interests of the child. Juggling those two frameworks was a tension.

What conversations did you have together?

We did a lot of reflection on holding the perpetrator accountable. He wasn’t criminally charged for breaches so the legal system was unable to hold him accountable. Men’s behaviour change is only useful if he takes responsibility for his actions. We talked about how the Child Protection interview can be an opportunity to put in the groundwork and get that change to happen.

How did you avoid collusive practices with perpetrators?

Consulting with Krysia and working within the feminist framework prevented me from buying into his violence-supporting narrative. Without that, an interview can offer him an opportunity to perpetrate further abuse by painting the woman as a bad parent. He started to take some responsibility after having contact with his children for a few weeks. The men’s behaviour change program reported working with him to make meaningful links between his use of violence and the impact on the children.

What is the benefit of Child Protection working with a family violence specialist?

It was really beneficial having Krysia located in Child Protection; she made a bridge between the statutory entity and the community services. ■

HOW TO HOLD PERPETRATORS TO ACCOUNT

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Prevention spotlight:

The statewide primary prevention strategy, launched last year was a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Family Violence and puts strategy into practice by providing a clear map of the Victorian government’s implementation priorities, investment and approach to primary prevention over the next three years. It articulates the importance of a long-term, staged approach to prevention with a dedicated $50.8 million for prevention activities, including:

• Respect Victoria, a statewide prevention agency to provide the leadership, collaboration, monitoring and drive for change that our growing sector needs

• Victorian Family Violence Prevention Research Alliance to build the evidence base on what works to prevent family violence and violence against women

• An innovation fund to support innovative prevention practice

• A commitment to build the workforce by developing new accredited primary prevention training

The prevention of violence against women sector – a small, but growing band of community agencies who have been working tirelessly for many years – needs these statewide mechanisms to ensure the work is sustainable, coordinated and strategic.

Despite the commitments outlined above, a large portion of the first action plan is weighted towards community-led initiatives that directly engage people and organisations, which are both politically appealing and generate a groundswell of support for the prevention of violence against women. The importance of community driven activity that creates real and lasting change in people’s lives can’t be underestimated, but Change the Story clearly states the need to balance this activity with building the critical infrastructure required to sustain our efforts.

Until recently, evidence for the effectiveness of prevention efforts came largely from discrete project evaluations. But international reviews have noted that to achieve the broad, deep and

sustainable change needed to prevent violence against women and their children, discrete projects and programs are not enough.1

Primary prevention work cuts across the whole Victorian population; small disparate programs (the only type of funding that’s been available until now) can’t have the same impact as work that’s designed in line with the evidence base and coordinated at a statewide level. The immense efforts made at a community level must be supported by something that connects their work in a sustainable, cohesive way at a statewide level. That ‘something’ is Respect Victoria.

Prevention agency and the evidence

Respect Victoria will be a statutory authority to coordinate and drive prevention efforts and harness the growing momentum to prevent family violence and violence against women by enabling community action, supporting Aboriginal self-determination and ensuring initiatives have a broad reach to support all Victorians.

The independence of Respect Victoria is crucial – it must have the funding and the freedom to build the evidence around what is effective in supporting statewide workforces, so that any prevention activity conducted is effective and relevant to their local community.

Coordination and building new knowledge are important, but it’s essential that Respect Victoria also drives policy change and builds the capacity of the workforce across the state. One of the important roles that Respect Victoria could play is in challenging the status quo and supporting government, businesses and community agencies to innovate and build the evidence in a range of settings.

Innovation and investment

Innovation is necessary to expand the sector at the exponential rate required. The word suggests a completely new, transformative approach. The recently announced Innovation Fund is specifically designed to support community groups and organisations to trial and evaluate new approaches to violence

prevention. Investment through this $1.75 million fund should be informed by a healthy appetite for risk because true innovation means learning from our failures as well as our successes. Importantly, each activity supported by the Innovation Fund needs to break new ground in prevention, but activities also need to be evaluated as a whole for their collective impact in supporting creativity and innovation in preventing violence.

More than the sum of its parts: the prevention action plan Free from Violence: Victoria’s first strategy to prevent family violence and all forms of violence against women: First action plan 2018 – 2021 marks a significant moment for the prevention of violence against women sector.

PARTNERS IN PREVENTION

DVRCV’s Partners in Prevention (PiP) program is one example of prevention infrastructure that can be applied in new settings to ensure broad, deep and sustainable prevention across the state.

PiP was created eleven years ago as a way of bringing practitioners together to share what they learned and has grown into a capacity-building network and community of practice around primary prevention, with more than 1,200 professionals, all of whom are supported to develop an evidence-based approach and fills a critical gap by providing practical information, tools, resources, training and advice to practitioners.

Without PiP’s coordinating influence, practitioners would have spent the last decade working in isolation. PiP provides a sense of working in a ‘sector’ and the capacity to advocate collectively for the importance of violence prevention work with young people.

That coordination, collaboration and information sharing has strengthened the current statewide rollout of respectful relationships education in Victoria.

PiP is a successful capacity building model that could be applied to other settings as initiatives are scaled up.

1. Our Watch, ANROWS and VicHealth (2015) Change the story: A shared framework for the primary prevention of violence against women and their children in Australia, Our Watch, Melbourne. p48

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Links to response

The plan clearly links to the government’s gender equality strategy Safe and Strong but lacks a strong practice connection to the broader family violence reforms or the work of the specialist family violence response sector.

It can be easy for prevention efforts to get lost in the face of overwhelming respond demand. While it’s important to have a dedicated focus on primary prevention – addressing the underlying drivers of violence against women and family violence, rather than responding to violence or reducing the risk of further violence – it’s just as important to recognise that any prevention activity will increase demand for response; the two are intrinsically linked.

Evidence shows that safe and effective primary prevention work needs to be informed by the current response context2, which simply means that prevention activities need to be delivered in areas where response to both perpetrators and victims (adults and children alike) is embedded in the local community and adequately resourced to manage the inevitable increase in demand.

Building the workforce

The Centre for Workforce Excellence is a key partner in the comprehensive and commendable workforce development portion of the rolling action plan. The commitment to developing new specialist primary prevention training and communities of practice is of critical importance. LGBTQI seniors, disability and Aboriginal sectors represent high risk but often invisible groups, so we commend the attention to embedding prevention in those sectors. To embed this work, these actions would be ideally complemented with resources, connection, and coordinated ways to share practice across and within communities.

Along with Our Watch and Women’s Health Victoria, DVRCV was funded by the Centre for Workforce Excellence to develop the first ever Preventing Family Violence and Violence against Women Capability Framework. As such, we can clearly see the potential of that framework to inform future training and shape

workforce development needs of the primary prevention workforce. The framework itself is an incredibly important start in gaining clarity on the different roles of those who are leading and continuing to primary prevention in Victoria, but it should be a living document.

Opportunity for systemic reform

Work to prevent violence from occurring in the first place has been happening in Victorian communities for many years, but it’s often on a small scale.

If we are going to create a future in which violence against women and family violence doesn’t exist, we need to make sure we reach every member of the Victorian community.

The primary prevention sector has never had an action plan with such a significant level of funding attached; the sector has developed

organically and we need to grasp this opportunity to articulate what is required to achieve that reach.

Quality prevention infrastructure is not just about establishing agencies, workforces, alliances and funds. It also requires mechanisms for quality assurance, political leadership and legislation.

This action plan outlines critical aspects of what is needed but we need to see work with government – and Respect Victoria, when it’s established – to support the creation of a vision for how this might look at a statewide, regional and local level, and how all these pieces of work and infrastructure will ‘speak to’ each other to make sure that every Victorian is engaged in prevention activity where they live, work, learn, socialise or play. ■

The immense efforts made at a community level must be supported by something that connects their work in a sustainable, cohesive way at a statewide level.

2. Ibid p37 If we are going to create a future in which violence against women and family violence doesn’t exist, we need to make sure we reach every member of the Victorian community.

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What is the biggest main difference between CNV and other specialist family violence services?

We’re the first women’s specialist family violence service that also delivers men’s behaviour change. It’s been ten years and we’re gradually getting closer to a fully integrated model to capitalise on the advantages of having men’s and women’s programs together. However, the Victorian system is not set up for this level of integration so we have set up our own systems and worked out how to minimise risk to women and children.

What’s the advantage of delivering both men’s and women’s services under the one roof?

Hosting services for men, women and children under one roof is crucial to the level of support we can offer. It means a woman could be receiving case management, attending a women’s group, getting financial support. Her children could be getting therapeutic support. Their father could be attending a men’s behaviour change program. The fact that we can pull all these services together for that family is the real advantage of our service.

How have you developed your approach?

We’ve done a lot of study and thinking about integrated models. We’ve invested in training about integrated models in America, Canada, the UK and New Zealand. We’ve considered how to apply those ideas safely within one service. It’s been quite a tentative process so we can be sure we’re not putting women at risk.

How does the CNV integrated model work in practice?

Police referrals are loaded onto a portal and different services get different viewing rights: men’s programs can only access the men’s referral information; women’s specialist family violence services can only access the woman’s referral. Child First and Child Protection have access to everything.

CNV receive police referrals for both men and women so we assess them together. We share information based on risk to the woman. Men’s workers and women’s workers operate within an integrated practice framework. This means a worker can look at information on a woman’s partner – and previous partner, if we’ve got information on them – to inform the risk assessment. We can have coordination conversations between the women’s case workers and the men’s key workers and therapeutic staff about the whole family.

Is it an advantage to have one manager for both the men’s and women’s team? Does that enable integration that would otherwise have to happen across different services?

Co-location enables shared understandings, common language, joined up risk assessment and daily case coordination. It’s all much easier if people sit in the same team and use the same framework. Women and children’s safety is central to our framework, so we’re less likely to privilege the man’s needs over the woman’s, which can happen if you’re not well connected to women’s services. Partner contact should be a key activity, but evidence suggests that women partners of men attending behaviour change programs rarely have contact with the family violence service system. A Melbourne University study found that ‘consistent, adequate partner contact that supported these women through the men’s behaviour change programs was not often evident and in one program, absent for considerable time’.

How do you manage risk?

Initially we were very risk averse and rented a new building for the purpose of running the men’s programs. Separate buildings, separate managers and separate staff. People were concerned that the women accessing the service could be put at risk by the men accessing the service. Slowly, we’ve built the confidence to bring them closer together.

We outgrew those two buildings and the opportunity arose to expand into the whole building so we did a risk assessment and decided to go ahead. We designed the refit with safety in mind and relocated in 2017.

What are the next steps for CNV?

Our men’s behaviour change program is focused on men taking responsibility for their use of violence towards family members, primarily women. Not all men are fathers and the curriculum reflects that.

In the future we plan to work individually and in groups with men who are fathers to support them to understand how their choice to use violence and control against the mother of their children affects their children and also how to be more child-centred as fathers. ■

Organisational spotlight:

Integration in action: men’s and women’s programs togetherThere is enormous value in what specialists from different services can bring to each other’s practice, however to do this well takes investment, planning, invention, caution and very thoughtful design. We talked with Cheryl at the Centre for Non-Violence (CNV), so that you can hear from the source how one organisation spent the last ten years integrating women’s and men’s services under the one roof.

It’s been quite a tentative process, so that we can make sure we’re not putting women at risk.

The Centre for Non Violence is based in Bendigo, covers the Loddon Campaspe region and aim to change public attitudes to violence, implement support and violence-prevention programs across schools, support victims of violence, and provide opportunities for accountability and change for men who use violence.

1. Humphreys, Cathy. (2013). The central place of women’s support and partner contact in men’s behaviour change programs. Ending Men’s Violence Against Women and Children: The No To Violence Journal. 7.

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For more information and referral on men’s behaviour change programs contact No to Violence on 1300 766 491 or visit www.ntv.org.au

Tips for engaging men on their use of family violence

TIP 01 SAFETY

TIP 02 IDENTIFY INVITATIONS TO COLLUDE

Central to any engagement is the safety of those experiencing the violence. It’s important not to engage with a man on his use of family violence in a way that increases the risk to a man’s ex/partner or kids. Don’t engage in an accusatory manner (oppositional, challenging, judging him, telling him his behaviour is bad or arguing with him) as it can make him disengage, resist, shame or anger him, increasing the risk of him choosing to use violence toward his ex/partner. Also, don’t bring attention to anything his ex/partner has said, as that could put them at further risk.

Identifying invitations to collude is critical to responding safely. When responding to a man’s attempts to minimise, excuse or justify

their use of violence, it is important to encourage them to re-evaluate their behaviour and self-exploration.

I just lost it. I snapped

I only pushed her.

She pushed my buttons

I was feeling so frustrated

Can you describe what “snapped”

looks like?

What was that like for her?

Can you tell me about what was

happening for you?

How did she experience it, what

was she feeling?

JUSTIFICATION:

BLAMING:

EXCUSING:

MINIMISING:

RESPONSE:

RESPONSE:

RESPONSE:

RESPONSE:

TIP 03 OPEN THE CONVERSATIONPeople are often resistant to opening up about certain incidents, but they may allude to them. Being curious and asking questions can help put his behaviour on the table.

We were having a normal argument.. it just got a bit out of hand. Really, she has blown this out of proportion.

What do you mean by out of

hand?

I just snapped. What did that look

like? If I was there what would I have

seen you do?

TIP 04 EXPERIENCE OF EX/PARTNERS AND KIDS

Encourage empathy for how his partner/kids are experiencing his behaviour, rather than his intentions or identity.

I threw a glass at the wall. I wasn’t aiming at her, wasn’t trying to hit her, I’m not like that. It was just frustration.

It sounds like Sam was frustrated too..

how did she then experience you

smashing the glass? How was she

feeling?

...ahh, pretty scared. She was still freaked out this morning when I tried to explain.

Where were the kids

when this happened?

They were asleep, they didn’t see anything. I’d never do that in front of them.

What would have been

like for them to hear that? Or see mum

scared of dad this morning?

Yeah… it’s not good.

TIP 05 CHANGE AND SUPPORT I’m hearing you want

a loving family, but I’m also hearing how your behaviour is damaging this; harming Sam and the kids. What needs to change do you think?

I don’t know.. I have to do something

though.

Would you be interested in getting some support to help you make these changes?

What kind of support

is there?

Identifying what a desirable future looks like can help reflection around what needs to change.

A conversation won’t always get this far, but if there is a mutual understanding that his behaviour is a problem, this can be an opportunity to suggest ongoing support.

MINIMISING

MINIMISINGEXCUSING

JUSTIFYINGBLAMING

Documents

Advocate - Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria · 2019. 12. 19. · DVRCV Advocate | April 2018 Victoria’s industry magazine providing news, interviews, articles and expert