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Edition 5 - March 2022
Dear colleagues
Despite the ever-present humidity, summer is officially over. Here's a roundup of our updates for March:
- Recording for our latest Community of Practice event, Working with First Nations clients, is now available to watch via youtube. Presenters included research fellow, Tahlia Eastman, and practitioner, Mark Richards.
- Are you an AOD clinician who using the intake and/or comprehensive assessment tool? We're measuring the impact of MARAM and we'd love to hear from you. Please consider completing our ten minute survey.
- AOD practitioners are needed for a focus group on a new project measuring how COVID-19 has impacted family violence within Victoria.
- No To Violence has released their full schedule of all upcoming webinars for their "What now?" series (each webinar focuses on a different MARAM responsibility for working with adults who use family violence). Scroll down for registrations and recordings of past webinars.
- Remember to check the Elevate! site for all your professional development and capacity building needs.
Wishing you a fabulous February
Dejan Jotanovic and Sheridon Byrne
P.S. See something missing, or something that you think other clinicians, team leads or organisational leaders need to be made aware? Let us know! We're happy to receive any and all editorial input. You can email us at familyviolence@vaada.org.au.
COP: Recording available
A new report has found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up almost 30% of hospitalisation due to family or domestic violence. Research shows that First Nations people, particularly women and children, are disproportionately affected by family violence, including family members who are not themselves Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. This violence affects entire communities and kinship networks.
It’s important to recognise that family violence involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people cannot be viewed outside of the history and contemporary experiences of dispossession, colonisation, institutionalisation and the impacts of child removal policies.
These systemic failures have resulted in a number of challenges for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experiencing family violence; barriers to services, misidentification of victim survivor status, discrimination, and state-imposed violence, among others.
Presenters:
- Tahlia Eastman, Palawa woman and University of Melbourne researcher
- Mark Richards, Wiradjuri man and training practitioner
The recording of this event has now been uploaded to youtube, and can be viewed here.
Mark and Tahlia have also kindly shared the resources they presented during their presentations. You can view/download them here.
Survey: AOD Intake/Comprehensive Assessment
In early 2021 the AOD Intake and Comprehensive Assessment tools were aligned to MARAM, and new questions were introduced to assist clinicians in identifying victim survivors of family violence.
We’ve created a survey to measure the impact that the MARAM alignment has had on Intake and/or Comprehensive Assessment practices. We are therefore interested in surveying AOD workers that have experienced the MARAM alignment and can use their working knowledge to let us know how the alignment has impacted them and their practice.
Results from the survey will be used to:
- drive feedback to the Department on using both tools to identify victim survivors,
- provide advice to the Department for the upcoming alignment of the tools to identify people using violence, and
- identify opportunities for VAADA to provide the AOD workforce with additional training, resourcing and professional development opportunities.
The survey should take between 10 and 15 minutes to complete. Complete the survey.
Future-proofing safety project
AOD Practitioners: Focus group participants needed
The Centre for Innovative Justice (CIJ), along with the Centre for Family Research and Evaluation (CFRE) at drummond street services and the Australian Institute for Family Studies (AIFS), would like to invite you to participate in the Future-proofing Safety Project.
The project aims to take a system-wide view of service interactions for people who experienced and used family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, recognising that in the context of the pandemic, people may have sought and received support from a range of services both within and outside of the specialist family violence sector, including the AOD sector.
Practitioners from across relevant sectors are invited to participate in two types of focus groups as part of this research. Place-based focus groups will bring together a range of services and disciplines operating within a particular geographical service environment.
Discipline or cohort-specific focus groups will allow for a deep dive into the ways in which practitioners working within specific practice frameworks delivered services in the context of COVID-19, including what this meant for clients. Practitioners can choose to participate in either or both rounds of focus groups, and can provide consent through the online consent form here.
To mitigate the impact of practitioner participation in this research on service continuity, your organisation will be reimbursed to the value of 90-minutes of practitioner time at a SCHADS 5.3 locum rate. This is not to incentivise participation, but to recognise the significant demand being faced by the sector during COVID-19 and the social recovery period.
If you consent to participate, the Centre for Innovative Justice will contact you directly to identify a suitable date and time for you to participate. Your participation is completely voluntary. If you have any questions about the focus groups, please don’t hesitate to contact Matilda Simpson via email at matilda.simpson@rmit.edu.au or by calling (03) 9925 5449
Updated monthly, the MARAM Training Calendar lists all upcoming training for AOD clinicians, practitioners, team leaders, managers and CEOs. It also included foundational training in the dynamics of family violence and Information Sharing Schemes.
Professional development and training
The Victorian Government has provided support to VAADA to administer a fully-funded, centralised workforce development program for the AOD sector until December 2022. This training and professional development program - Elevate! - is available to all AOD workforce currently employed within funded AOD services across Victoria.
Upcoming training you may be interested in:
Trans and Gender Diverse Cultural Sensitivity and Awareness Training - March 18
Introduction to Aboriginal Cultural Safety Training - March 21
AOD within LGBTI+ Communities: Cultural Sensitivity Training - April 4
Click here to view all other training
MARAM Training
eLearn: MARAM Brief and Intermediate eLearn course for practitioners working with victim survivors
Provider: Department of Health
Delivery mode: eLearning self-paced (three modules, each module 20-25 minutes)
The modules cover: a shared understanding of family violence, an introduction to MARAM and the assessment tools, the Structured Professional Judgement model, risk assessment, risk management including working with specialist family violence services and safety planning.
- Register here
Unsure which MARAM training is right for you? Consult the MARAM training decision tree.
News from the FV sector
"This resource expands on and extends the evidence contained in Change the story: a shared framework for the primary prevention of violence against women in Australia." Read view the framework on The APO.
"This paper examines the impact of technology-facilitated violence on victim–survivors of intimate partner violence in regional, rural or remote areas of Australia (New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland) who are socially or geographically isolated." Read more via the AIC.
"Child sex abuse survivor and advocate, Grace Tame has posted a blistering open letter to media following the rampant publishing of a photo that showed the former Australian of the Year next to a bong when she was nineteen years old." Read more on Women's Agenda.
"A third of Australian men who kill their female partners are high functioning elsewhere in their lives and had not previously come to police attention. Their partners were also middle-class, employed and may not have recognised themselves as victims." Read more on SMH.
"Horrendous media reports of deaths of women (and, sometimes, children too) at the hands of their current or former partners are seemingly so common they have led to the frequently repeated, but in fact erroneous, comment that one woman a week is killed in Australia." Read more on SMH.
Resources to support your practice
MARAM Person Using Violence Guides: What Now? Web Series
No To Violence's webinar series - "What Now?" - aims to help workforces familiarise themselves with the newly released MARAM Practice Guides. These webinars do not replacing any MARAM training in 2022.
Recordings
Responsibility 1: Respectful,
sensitive and safe engagement AND Responsibility 2: Identification of
family violence risk - Recording
Responsibility 3: Intermediate Risk Assessment - Recordings - Part 1 - Part 2
(video pw: NTVWHATNOW)
Upcoming registrations
Responsibility 4: Intermediate Risk Management - Tuesday 1 March - Register
Responsibility 5: Secondary
consultation and referral, including
for comprehensive family violence
assessment and management
response AND Responsibility 6: Contribute to Information Sharing with other
services (as authorised by
legislation) - Tuesday 5 April - Register
Responsibility 7: Comprehensive
Risk Assessment - Tuesday 3 March - Register
Responsibility 8: Comprehensive
Risk Management - Tuesday 31 May - Register
Responsibility 9: Contribute to
Coordinated Risk Management AND Responsibility 10: Collaborate for
Ongoing Risk Assessment and Risk
Management - Tuesday 28 June - Register
No to Violence has created a helpful fact sheet to explain and promote the roles and responsibilities of the Victorian Specialist Family Violence Advisors. You can view/download here.
Wed 23 March 2022
10:00 am – 11:00 am AEST (QLD time)
This presentation provides an overview of the demographic and professional profile of AOD workers with lived and living experience, and how wellbeing can be supported and promoted among this group from an organisational perspective.
If in doubt, remember to consult the MARAM Navigator on the VAADA website, or reach out to your Specialist Family Violence Advisers for a consult.
Support directory
MARAM and Information Sharing
Contact the Information Sharing and MARAM Enquiry Line for practice and policy guidance.
- 1800 549 646 (10am-2pm, Mon-Fri)
Contact the Specialist Family Violence Adviser in your area
Secondary consultations
Are you working with someone who has, is, or you suspect will use or experience family violence? Here is who you can contact for additional support and guidance:
- Men's Referral Service (operated by No To Violence) - 1300 766 491
- SafeSteps - 1800 015 188
Contact us if you're unsure and we'll help refer you; familyviolence@vaada.org.au
Save to your desktop
The Power and Control wheel was created in 1984 by staff at the Domestic Abuse Intervention Project (DAIP). In listening to the stories of women experiencing physical and sexual violence they charted the tactics used by their partners on highlighted the ones most universally experienced.
It's important to remember that this wheel was created from a very specific evidence base: heterosexual women experiencing violence from men. An intersectional approach is needed when working with your clients to therefore determine whether violence is occurring and who is the person using violence.
