Fast tracking into a stronger future

Ensuring an expert, supported and passionate family violence workforce for the future is challenging and not easy to achieve. That's why DVRCV wholeheartedly welcomed the Victorian Government's recent announcement to invest further in the family violence sector as part of its Rolling Action Plan.

This means that our Fast Track Professional Development Program, piloted in 2019, will now be expanded in 2020 enabling us to provide more opportunities to build the knowledge and skill capabilities of professionals wanting to move into specialist family violence leadership roles.

So, why is upskilling the workforce and our Fast Track Program so crucial?

If we are to make in-roads to reducing the prevalence of family violence and other forms of violence against women, we need skilled practitioners in key roles to have the ability to design and implement programs that address the root causes and contributing factors underpinning this violence. Similarly, in order to operate an effective system designed to prevent and respond to family violence and violence against women, it is crucial that appropriately skilled workforces are in place to meet the challenges we face.

Fast tracking the up-skilling of our current workforce with the capabilities to support systems implementation and service delivery, and ensuring the supply of prevention practitioners with the capability to work across settings, with specific populations, and across the general community is therefore critical.

Our Fast Track Pilot Program

Piloted in 2019 and funded by Family Safety Victoria (FSV), our program was designed to fast track the supply of knowledgeable and skilled Tier 1 senior level practitioners to take up urgently needed specialist family violence management and leadership roles. The program was conducted over a three month period and involved ten face to face sessions, coaching and mentoring, workplace experience and a community of practice. Workshops were structured around leadership and management skills as outlined in FSV’s family violence Capability Frameworks and included topics such as managing risk, leading systems and quality services, advocacy and reform.

Read a summary of our evaluation findings.

Moving Fast Track in the future

With confirmation of further investment and learnings from our pilot program taken on board, a new iteration of the program has been developed and will expand in 2020. This means more opportunities to diversify the program for delivery to wider audiences over a two-year period. We look forward to sharing more details about what our new and invigorated program looks like and how to become a part of it.