Page 1591 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 July 2020
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significantly improve the legal and health outcomes for those affected by domestic and family violence. The partnerships have also greatly improved the ability of staff to identify the warning signs of domestic and family violence and provide the trusted support that women need.
Domestic and family violence is the leading cause of homelessness in Australia, and concerns about money and housing weigh heavily on women who are deciding whether to leave a violent relationship. Finding safety should not mean that women lose their home or financial stability. The family safety hub brought together representatives from financial, legal, crisis and housing services who, together, generated ideas to prevent these crises from occurring.
From this, the family safety hub has begun work on a response to the hidden issue of financial abuse. Financial abuse can be subtle. It can be gradual. It is controlling. Financial abuse is not easily recognised by those who are experiencing it or by the services that support them. The hub is testing a program with Care Financial Counselling and our community and support workers to provide the information and tools that they need to recognise and respond to financial abuse.
Children and young people seeing and experiencing domestic and family violence are affected differently from the adults around them. This year the family safety hub and the ACT Children and Young People Commissioner partnered to listen to young people’s experience of domestic and family violence. Experienced child-safe practitioners led the project, ensuring that young people were safe, set the project priorities and advised on engagement methods.
Consulting with young people and gaining their insights provided strong messages for policy, system and service reform. Children’s experiences and needs are different from those of adults and we need supports that meet their unique needs. These insights will enable government services and the community to improve support for children and young people affected by domestic and family violence. The family safety hub will draw on these insights to co-design child-centred solutions in the second half of 2020.
Our commitment in the 2019-20 budget of $2.476 million over four years to continue the delivery of the domestic and family violence training to all our 21,000 government staff is progressing well. From previous ministerial statements you may remember the importance of this training to equip staff with the skills they need to recognise and respond to clients and colleagues experiencing domestic and family violence. From June 2019 to March 2020, over 1,400 staff participated in the foundation e-learn and over 580 participated in the foundation manager face-to-face training.
Those seeking help for family violence will turn to someone that they trust, so we need to make sure that, no matter where or who they turn to, our staff are ready and skilled to respond. The suite of training modules and delivery methods have become very sophisticated to meet the diverse needs of all the professionals and business units across government, including ACT Policing.
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