Working together to support victim survivors of domestic and family violence

Working in this way delivers significantly better outcomes for victim survivors, efficiencies for service delivery organisations, and benefits and savings throughout the entire system.

Many organisations work, or aspire to work, in an integrated way, but it can be difficult to implement and sustain this approach in practice and there are system-level barriers given the siloed and highly fragmented nature of services and funding sources. It is an established way of working that the specialist family violence sector wants to see grow and develop.

In 2020 and 2021, Social Ventures Australia, funded by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, led a collaborative project to capture and illustrate best practice integrated service delivery.

This work was a collaboration between Social Ventures Australia, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia as part of its Next Chapter program, and social sector organisations working to improve outcomes for victim survivors including McAuley Community Services for Women, WEstjustice, EDVOS, Muslim Women Australia’s Linking Hearts program, Domestic Violence Victoria, Homelessness NSW and InTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence.

The aim of the project was to build knowledge, resources and practical tools for organisations working at the intersection of domestic and family violence and other key specialist services required by victim survivors (such as legal assistance, housing, counselling and primary care) to help organisations increase the level of integration of their services.

The project involved case studies, interviews, and reviewing selected literature to outline the benefits of integrated service delivery and provide practical insights and learnings from organisations that are working together to improve outcomes for victim survivors of domestic and family violence.

An overview for social sector organisations on integrated service delivery

This document summarises the benefits of integrated service delivery and provides practical insights and learnings from organisations that are working together in this way. It is intended for use by leaders in service delivery organisations who are considering integrated practice.

The most common form of family violence involves men abusing their current or former wife, girlfriend or partner. Other forms of family violence include:

• In same-sex relationships.
• Children and young people experiencing abuse from their parents or step-parents.
• Teenagers or older children abusing their parents or siblings.
• Older people experiencing abuse from adult children (also known as elder abuse).
• People with disabilities can be abused by their carers, who may or may not be family members.
• In Aboriginal and some other communities, the definition of family may include kinship groups and other community members.

Children and young people are also victims of family violence when they see or hear violence between other family members, or see the impact (such as the impact on the victim or damage to property).

The documents listed in the table below are provided by the three case study organisations (McAuley Community Services for Women, EDVOS and Linking Hearts) as examples of templates and resources to support integrated service delivery. Service delivery providers may wish to adopt and adapt these resources to support integrated service delivery in their organisation. These resources have been generously shared by organisations to assist other service delivery providers in their implementation of integrated service delivery. Please adopt and adapt them as you see fit.