Strengthening Victoria’s Workforce Capacity to Better Respond to Family Violence

Agency

inTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence

Task

Identify gaps and opportunities for workforce capacity building across the Victorian family violence specialist service system to produce a theory driven Investment Logic Map framework.

Evaluation Approach

Culturally Responsive formative evaluation.

The evaluation adopted a culturally responsive approach and drew from   

principles-based practices in family violence prevention and program design.

Using critical race, postcolonial, feminist theories and ecological systems thinking, we    recommended actions that address structural and institutional asymmetries underlying:

• unequal access to protective factors  
• unequal exposure to risk factors

Description

Critical race, postcolonial, and feminist theories remind us that the current, unequal distribution of access to critical services are the cumulative effects of historical and ongoing patterns of inequity. This contributes to limited understanding by policy developers of the ways in which family violence uniquely impacts multicultural women and their communities.

The evaluation provides a framework for the family violence workforce to design and deliver responses that meet the needs of migrants, including former refugee communities, who are victims of family violence.

Recommendations

• Uplift sector-wide capability in migrant & refugee specific service delivery. Partner and engage in efforts that build the migrant/ refugee workforce—closing ethnic and gender-based gaps and power differentials in employment, income, and influence, which increase the likelihood of exploitation and abuse.
• Formally establish, manage and deliver best practice culturally responsive training through a range of training delivery modes.
• Maintain active partnerships with multicultural communities to influence and inform their family violence service design and delivery and
• Increase State Government understanding and prioritisation of multicultural communities in law and policy reform that change political, social, and cultural narratives around power and control over service delivery decisions—including by modelling shared power through long-term partnership and the symmetric, reciprocal exchange, as opposed to the asymmetric extraction or deposit, of knowledge, staff, and other resources.