Strengthening family violence support

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Quantum Support Services is seeking to improve support for local migrant and refugee women with a new bout of funding.

The support service recently received funding from the State Government’s Working Together: Strengthening Family Violence Support with Multicultural Communities grant program.

Quantum specialist family violence manager Carolyn Richards said the service would implement a 12-month project with the funding, aimed at improving the skills and knowledge of local organisations to support women in Gippsland from migrant and refugee backgrounds experiencing family violence.

“We’ve found that there is a lack of consolidated and consistent culturally responsive family violence approach when engaging and assisting and advising women from migrant or non-English speaking backgrounds,” Ms Richards explained.

“We will work together (local support organisations) to improve the ability to engage and support refugee and migrant women who are experiencing family violence.”

While the findings of the program will be applied across Gippsland, the project will primarily take place in the Latrobe Valley area and will include other organisations including Gippsland Women’s Health.

To gather information and provide a voice for local migrant and refugee women, engagement sessions will be held as part of the project to inform best practices for local organisations.

Ms Richards said a best practice resource would be developed with the information collected to increase the knowledge and skills of people working within local support organisations so they can appropriately identify, support and refer women experiencing family violence.

She said the resources were intended to help organisations imbed cultural safety practices in their family violence responses and develop relationships between organisations.

“We are looking to also provide education for how to provide safety planning and identification of family violence for those working within the cultural services so that it will be picked up sooner.”

Ms Richards said sometimes information was not communicated by support services in a way people of different cultures, experiences or backgrounds could understand.

A number of other support services across the state also received funding from the Working Together grant project, which is intended to support projects across regional and metropolitan areas, including support for adolescents experiencing family violence, faith and community leaders, maternal child health centres and community sport.

Prevention of Family Violence minister Ros Spence said the government is ensuring the family violence and sexual assault system is easier to understand and access for diverse Victorian communities - and support is accessible.

“We are building an inclusive, responsive and culturally safe family violence system that works in partnership with community organisations to provide sensitive and effective prevention and responses to family violence,” she said.