Page 1686 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 7 June 2022
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Violence Prevention Council on whether to criminalise coercive control as a standalone offence. The council advised undertaking further consultation and research prior to considering criminalisation and emphasised the importance of non-legislative ways to address coercive control.
The ACT is taking steps outside criminalisation to better address domestic and family violence and coercive control through the ACT Domestic and Family Violence Risk Assessment and Management Framework. The framework will help to ensure that service providers share an understanding of domestic and family violence, including coercive control, to effectively respond. The framework was developed with the community sector and reflects Australian and international best practice and research. A final framework will be released this year.
In the past year we published the ACT practice standards for men’s behaviour change programs, developed in partnership with community, government and legal sectors. The standards help organisations to shift accountability to those who are choosing to use violence, and create opportunities for perpetrator behaviour change.
We also supported the ACT’s service system to better hold perpetrators accountable through specialised training delivered by expert providers, Stopping Family Violence. Sessions were fully booked and the training has helped equip services to respond more effectively to perpetrators and promote victim-survivor safety.
We are also funding Care Inc to support people experiencing financial abuse, an insidious form of domestic and family violence. Care Inc has also provided financial abuse training for the community sector around recognising and responding to financial abuse.
Someone’s identity and circumstances can affect the way they might experience violence and the responses that they need. These intersections are often compounding, and we must tailor supports for the full breadth of our diverse community.
In the past year the ACT government has continued to build on previous consultations with children and young people about their experiences with domestic and family violence. I am pleased that a new service for children under 12 will be designed and delivered in 2022-23, in partnership with the community sector. Work over the past year has secured a provider to develop an ACT-specific service, informed by evidence from Australia and internationally. I am proud of the ACT’s innovative work to support children as victim-survivors in their own right.
We are also finding ways to support the ACT’s culturally and linguistically diverse community. In 2022 we allocated $109,000, under a commonwealth national partnership agreement, to the Multicultural Hub Canberra to expand its women’s services. The service supports multicultural women experiencing domestic and family violence and provides advocacy for women on temporary visas. Temporary visa arrangements can place women in horrific situations with very few options. Over the past year I have continued to advocate on this issue at the national level.
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