Recommendation 94 enshrines what many workers in the primary prevention of violence against women (PVAW) and local government sectors already know: local government is critical in driving the change needed to prevent violence against women and to embed gender equity and respect into local communities.

Councils work with people across all life stages and across a number of settings, such as health and community services, arts, sports and recreation, education and care settings and public spaces. Councils are a major employer within their municipality, providing them with a unique opportunity to embed primary prevention in their communities through civic leadership, service provision, policies, work practices and community engagement. Over the last decade, councils across Victoria have been taking action at the local level to address the drivers of violence against women as set out in the national prevention framework, Change the Story.

It would be hard to talk about prevention of violence against women in the local government space without talking to Kellie Nagle, Policy Adviser for Prevention of Violence against Women at the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) since 2011. The position is, in Kellie’s words, “a networking position that links councils to each other and to the broader PVAW system.”

For the last six years, Kellie has convened quarterly network meetings which attract dozens of workers from across the state to share learnings and challenges and stay up to date on primary prevention. But her role is much more than simply linking local government PVAW workers to each other. The scope of Kellie’s role has expanded since the RCFV, and Kellie’s role is now seen as a conduit for state government and other services to keep a finger on the pulse of what is happening in the PVAW space in local government.

Councils working in a deliberate and coordinated way on this issue is a relatively new development. Prior to the MAV Policy Adviser role, Kellie began her work in local government at Darebin City Council in 2007 as the Family Violence Project Coordinator where it was her role to “explore if councils had a role in family violence.” This was when Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon introduced major family violence reforms in Victoria Police, which led to a spike in reporting of violence against women. Suddenly each council had a clearer picture of the rates of family violence in their communities, and the data was sobering. VicHealth had released their ground-breaking 2004 report, The Health Costs of Violence: Measuring the burden of disease caused by intimate partner violence which found that intimate partner violence is the single greatest contributor to death, disability and illness in Victorian women between the ages of 15-44. Councils were increasingly taking notice of these developments and considering their role in the health, wellbeing and safety of the community. Kellie piloted a statewide PVAW networking project out of Darebin City Council, and two years later the Premier announced funding for the position at the MAV.

The importance of the policy adviser role for PVAW work in local government cannot be underestimated. Kellie has established links with at least one worker from all 79 councils in Victoria, and has a handful of contacts at most councils. Over the last year she has overseen ten projects funded by the Victorian Government through the Local Government PVAW Grants Program, administered by the MAV and their gender equity e-bulletin is essential reading in the prevention sector, reaching over 600 individuals, both within and outside of local government.

Impressive as these numbers are, the significance lies in the connections being formed through the network and Kellie’s role as a local government cog in the prevention sector. The position was designed to keep violence against women on the agenda of all councils, but it has also encouraged the sharing of ideas, challenges, learnings and initiatives within local government and the broader PVAW sector. Rather than reinventing the wheel, councils have been able to know and build on each other’s successes. The MAV recently launched the PVAW Promising Practice Portal, a collaborative website where councils are invited to share examples of practices, projects and plans that they have developed to support PVAW. Kellie says, “Councils are incredibly good at sharing their work with each other and they can also be quite competitive.” This combination of information sharing and competition creates a particularly useful framework for innovation and action in primary prevention.

Kellie has seen major changes in the local government sector since she began the pilot role back at Darebin City Council nearly a decade ago. “Councils’ focus has expanded from thinking in terms of response-based work into considering primary prevention and culture change”. She also says that many councils are starting to move away from awareness-raising activities on one day of the year to embedding primary prevention principles into everything they do – work practices, service provision, policies, culture and community engagement.

Increasingly, councils are taking creative and varied action; they’re implementing gender equitable parenting programs in maternal and child health services, libraries are actively featuring children’s books that resist traditional gender stereotyping, and councils are implementing programs that mentor women to run for local council. Other councils are auditing public spaces to ensure they are welcoming and accessible for women, adding sports facilities and programs to increase women’s participation in physical activity, and putting gender equity guidelines in place for anyone wanting to hire council venues. One council has even introduced a gender equitable superannuation policy that provides a higher rate of superannuation for women in acknowledgement that women retire with significantly less super than men.

“But there is so much more to be done,” says Kellie. Only three Victorian councils have a full-time dedicated PVAW or gender equity worker; most allocate this role to a staff member who has a few hours a week dedicated to PVAW-related work. In the MAV’s submission to the RCFV, it called for a gender equity development officer to be funded at every council. The MAV wants to see state government recognise the critical role local councils play in delivering on many of the Victorian PVAW strategies – and invest in the local government workforce accordingly.

But challenges aside, Kellie’s role at the MAV has ensured that there is someone taking a bird’s eye view of PVAW in local government, joining the dots and connecting the right people. It is ensuring that there is not a piecemeal approach to the work, and that the learnings made in one council are incorporated into other projects and become part of the accumulated wisdom of councils and others working in this space.

More information

Visit the Municipal Association of Victoria website for more information and resources on gender equality.

To subscribe to the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Gender Equality email updates, please contact Kellie Nagle: knagle@mav.asn.au

Read more of the December 2017 edition of The Advocate
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For this to be a reality, enormous changes across almost all aspects of our society is required, which will rely on the collaboration of many: government services, correction services, legislative and judicial systems, and between the service sectors that traditionally operated in more siloed ways.

We have seen some changes begin as a result of investigations, inquiries, research and royal commissions into circumstances related to children, families and family violence, and although it is never their responsibility, it is the courage of victim survivors who have spoken about their experiences that has often set that change in motion.

Last week, the Victorian parliament passed a Greens motion to start the process to expunge criminal convictions given to children in state care; until 1991, children placed in state care were charged with being in need of protection, which then appeared on police criminal history records, compounding the suffering those children experienced even further.

Many of these children would have been fleeing their home due to family violence. Protection charges of children that are conflated with criminal charges should be expunged and the systems in place to protect children who cannot find safety at home should be accountable to the care they provide. For us, this also underlines the need for women to have the financial independence and support to provide safety and protection for their children when experiencing family violence.

Women experiencing violent or abusive relationships face high financial barriers to escape. This makes leaving impossible for many, and is the motivation behind the campaign calling on the federal government and the Fair Work Commission to implement ten days of paid family and domestic violence leave for Australian workers to support victim survivors of family violence.

Like so many of the changes that have been advocated in this area, paid family violence leave would be just a first step in the ongoing change that is required to address this national emergency.

To ensure a world free from violence for every child, it is critical that the various legal, child and family welfare, educational and family violence organisations working with children and parents experiencing family violence fulfil their roles within a coordinated effort and that our common goals of keeping women and children safe guide our collaboration.

Dr Kate O’Halloran presents a summary of issues arising out of submissions to the Royal Commission into Family Violence (excerpt of full article).

The recently held Royal Commission into Family Violence provided a much-needed opportunity to address gaps within the sector.

One clear issue that emerged was that, at present, family violence is treated within a binarygender model of male perpetrator and female victim, often in the context of a heterosexual relationship. As pointed out in the submission by the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby (VGLRL), such an approach is insufficient and ‘inappropriate in addressing domestic violence in LGBTI relationships’.

It is understandable why such a framework exists. As noted in the joint submission to the Royal Commission by Safe Steps and No To Violence (NTV): Women are at least 6 times more likely than men to be the victim of physical assault by a current or former partner, 24 times more likely than men to become homeless due to experiencing intimate partner violence; and a woman’s experience of intimate partner violence is associated with substantially more fear and severity than men’s.

Accordingly, and in practice, most mainstream services adopt a feminist approach that insists that family violence is rooted in patriarchal and systemic gendered inequality. Often, however, this defaults to an exclusive focus on heterosexual intimate partner violence that, according to the VGLRL submission, results in ‘LGBTI groups being rendered invisible’. Crucially, this means that ‘some people in abusive relationships will not recognise it as such and therefore may not seek help’.

The barriers towards appropriately addressing family violence in an LGBTIQ context are numerous. They begin with limited statistical data on the prevalence of such violence. Data collected by mainstream services at national and state level on intimate partner violence ‘omits sexuality indicators, making it very difficult for researchers and policy makers to consider evidence for, and design programs in response to, issues affecting GLBT populations’ (ACON 2011).

What data has specifically been collected on the LGBTIQ community, however, suggests that rates of intimate partner violence are either equal to, or higher than, those of family violence between non-LGBTIQ people (ACON 2009).

This is an excerpt from the full article that was published in the spring/summer 2015 edition of DVRCV Advocate.

Dr Kate O’Halloran is a trainer at DVRCV.  

DVRCV’s submission to the Royal Commission included a comprehensive list of recommendations covering prevention, early intervention and response.

One specific area of focus was about the need to ‘embed a universal risk assessment and risk management framework’ in Victoria using the Family Violence Risk Assessment and Risk Management Framework (CRAF) as the foundation.

Released in 2007, CRAF is now the central tool for assessing and responding to family violence risk across different sectors and settings in Victoria. It serves as one of the most significant pieces of collaborative work to reduce family violence harm in the state.  CRAF was also critical to the development of an integrated family violence system in Victoria.

The Framework adopts a ‘structured professional judgement’ approach that combines three elements to determine the level of risk:

• the victim’s own assessment of their level of risk
• evidence-based risk indicators
• the practitioner’s professional judgement.

In 2008 DVRCV, together with Swinburne University and No To Violence, was contracted to develop and deliver CRAF training programs and materials. Since that time, DVRCV has delivered, or co-delivered, CRAF training to over 6,500 Victorian service providers. In doing so, DVRCV trainers and others have identified gaps in the Framework, challenges around its use, and issues connected to the training and roll-out of CRAF. Our submission detailed those gaps and challenges, and called for a comprehensive review of CRAF.

This is an excerpt from the full article that was published in the spring/summer 2015 edition of DVRCV Advocate.

Libby Eltringham is the Policy and Legal Worker at DVRCV. 

Aboriginal women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised from family violence [1] and almost 11 times more likely to be killed as a result of violent assault.[2] Aboriginal women have been identified as the most legally disadvantaged group in Australia.[3]

Tragically, family violence against Victorian Aboriginal people appears to be escalating. Across Victoria, police reports of family violence against Aboriginal people (predominantly women and children) have tripled in less than a decade.[4]

This is despite evidence that the majority of family violence incidents go unreported and the reality that Aboriginal women are markedly less likely to disclose family violence due to a multitude of complex barriers.[5]

Family violence is complex and the issues our clients face are complex. Our clients live with intergenerational trauma, removal of children, discrimination, poverty, mental health issues, family violence-driven housing instability and homelessness, disability, lower levels of literacy and numeracy, as well as a range of other cultural, legal and non-legal issues.

There are multiple complex and diverse factors contributing to the high levels and severity of family violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. It must be clearly understood that the causes do not derive from Aboriginal culture. Family violence is not part of Aboriginal culture. However, the disadvantage, dispossession and attempted destruction of Aboriginal cultures since colonisation have meant that family violence has proliferated in Aboriginal communities.

This does not, however, mean that family violence affecting Aboriginal victims/survivors, predominantly women and children, is exclusively the domain of Aboriginal communities—or that all perpetrators of violence against Aboriginal women are Aboriginal men. There is insufficient data on the Aboriginality of perpetrators and FVPLS Victoria routinely sees Aboriginal clients, mostly women, who experience family violence at the hands of men from a range of different backgrounds and cultures, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. The only certainty in the existing data is that Aboriginal women are at disproportionately higher risk of family violence.

This is an excerpt from the full article that was published in the spring/summer 2015 edition of DVRCV Advocate.

Endnotes

1. The Australian Productivity Commission (2014) Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage—Key Indicators 2014, 4.93 table 4A.11.22

2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2006) Family Violence Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Cat. no. IHW 17, p.71

3. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) (2003) Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee, Parliament of Australia, Inquiry into Legal Aid and Access to Justice, 13 November 2003, p.4

4. Victorian Auditor-General (2014) Victorian Auditor-General’s Report: Accessibility of Mainstream Services for Aboriginal Victorians, p.57

5. Matthew Willis (2011) ‘Non-disclosure of violence in Australian Indigenous communities’, Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, No. 405

The findings from Luke’s inquest, handed down by State Coroner Judge Ian Gray on 28 September 2015, have highlighted the critical need to improve the way that family violence risk, and the risk of filicide in the context of family violence, is assessed and managed across the service system.

Despite a long and documented history of violence and abuse by Greg Anderson towards Rosie, as well as her contact with multiple services, Judge Gray noted the systems failure to engage with Greg Anderson. The responsibility to protect Luke was largely borne by Rosie. Luke’s death is a tragic example of what can happen in a system where risk of domestic homicide and family violence harm is not assessed and managed consistently and rigorously across sectors. There is no question: the system needs to change.

The Coroner made a number of recommendations about Victoria’s Family Violence Risk Assessment and Risk Management Framework (otherwise known as the Common Risk Assessment Framework or CRAF) including that it be reviewed and validated to ensure that Victoria has the best tool available to assess and manage family violence risk, including risk to children.

CRAF provides a common or standardised approach to risk assessment and can be applied across all organisations in Victoria that respond to, or encounter people experiencing, family violence. CRAF is widely available, and intended to be used across a large range of professional and service types, including police and the community sector.

However, Luke’s inquest highlighted that even first responders in critical sectors, like Victoria Police and Child Protection, were not always being trained in CRAF and not using it consistently. The Coroner recommended that all agencies in the family violence system be mandated to use an updated CRAF, and adequate training be provided. Operational support for agencies to embed CRAF within their responses was also recommended. Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria applauds these recommendations.

Effective use of CRAF requires effective information sharing. The Coroner noted that in this case there was no 360 degree information sharing; no uniform approach to risk assessment and no coordinated approach to risk management and safety planning. Had this been in place the assessment of the seriousness of risk faced by Rosie and Luke may have led to different outcomes.

Since 2008, over 6,500 professionals from a wide range of services have completed CRAF training. Judge Gray made recommendations on the need for further widespread training on recognising, understanding and responding to family violence. Understanding risk is a critical part of this.

More widespread and consistent use of CRAF will mean that, in future, the types of risk factors exhibited by someone like Greg Anderson could be flagged across the system, information shared and strategies put in place to manage the risks. It would mean that all services would apply common standards and practices to ensure the focus of any intervention and support remained on the safety of those experiencing violence. Using the same approach also minimises the risk of misunderstandings and important information being lost. It is a crucial step in preventing further deaths of women and children.

Last week, the federal government pledged $14 million for family violence workforce development. Now is the time to invest in making sure effective risk assessment practices are embedded across all sectors that respond to family violence.

Related media

ABC Radio – PM, 28 September 2015

7.30 Report – 28 September 2015 (story starts at 24.21 minute mark)

‘Stop domestic violence for all time’, The Age, 28 September 2015

‘Let’s talk about men’s deadly sense of entitlement’, The Age, 28 September 2015

‘Rights of children must trump violent parents: Rosie Batty’, The Age, 28 September 2015

Rosie Batty: coroner is right about child protection and police systems, The Guardian, 28 September 2015

Rosie Batty media conference 28 September 2015