Identifying Family Violence Training
Funder
Hume Region Family Violence Managers Steering Committee
Service/Program
Identifying Family Violence Training
Background
The Victorian government has recognized a need for a consistent approach when managing family violence from the different services that come into contact with people that are experiencing family violence. This includes specific family violence workers, police, courts, doctors, nurses and other medical staff, teachers, youth workers or employment agency staff.
The focus of the framework is to ensure the victim's safety and that the response received by a victim is respectful, informed, holistic and understanding regardless of their background and/or the organisation's culture.
It has been recognized that different groups will need varying degrees of knowledge when it comes to working with victims of family violence so the framework has three different levels of training.
- THE COMPREHENSIVE ASSESSMENT ~ is for specialist family violence services
- PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT ~ for professionals who work with family violence but it is not their core business, such as police, court workers or intake workers
- IDENTIFYING FAMILY VIOLENCE ~ for professionals who may come across people in their work who they believe may be experiencing family violence such as doctors, teachers or employment agencies
Description
The training is targeted to a range of community / human services.
The training is co-facilitated with a professional from the local area (for example, police or family violence/sexualised assault worker) and will be conducted over 4-5 hours including lunch.
The training includes:
- How to identify if family violence is an issue for their clientele.
- Information about the nature of family violence including statistics and the myths about the causes of family violence
- Practical information about what they can do if their client is experiencing family violence
- Information about safety planning and referral pathways in their local area
How it has been used in the past
IFV Training has been used as a prelude to CRAF training in Preliminary and Comprehensive Risk Assessment which is conducted by Swinburne.
Outcomes
Workers will have developed an increased understanding of what family violence is and will have explored common beliefs around the causes of family violence. Workers also have an opportunity to discuss safety planning and specific questions to ask if a client is experiencing family violence. Most importantly, workers leave with concrete information regarding where to go to for information and where to refer someone onto for further assistance.
Opportunities
- To build the capacity of different services to respond appropriately and consistently to women and children escaping or experiencing family violence.
- To highlight the need for organisations to develop a plan which supports staff who are working with clients experiencing family violence.
- There is the opportunity to develop a training package which enables key workers in each community to deliver the IFV training. This would build the capacity for the training to be sustainable in the Hume region.
