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Research

Our research

Violence against women and children affects everybody. It impacts on the health, wellbeing and safety of a significant proportion of Australians throughout all states and territories and places an enormous burden on the nation’s economy across family and community services, health and hospitals, income-support and criminal justice systems.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

News and events

ANROWS hosts events as part of its knowledge transfer and exchange work, including public lectures, workshops and research launches. Details of upcoming ANROWS activities and news are available from the list on the right.

ANROWS

About ANROWS

ANROWS was established by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments of Australia to produce, disseminate and assist in applying evidence for policy and practice addressing violence against women and their children.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

Resources

To support the take-up of evidence, ANROWS offers a range of resources developed from research to support practitioners and policy-makers in delivering evidence-based interventions.


RP.14.13

National mapping and meta-evaluation outlining key features of effective “safe at home” programs that enhance safety and prevent homelessness for women and their children who have experienced domestic and family violence

Estimated end date:
This project was completed in May 2017.

This project mapped current Australian “Safe at Home” programs and approaches. The project provided evidence about how women who have experienced domestic and family violence can best be supported to stay safe in their own homes.


Domestic and family violence have consistently been identified as major reasons for women’s homelessness. A number of jurisdictions have implemented “safe at home” programs or approaches which aim to mitigate the specific homelessness and safety impacts of domestic violence on women and their children. Although these are relatively new programs, a number of these have been evaluated. A meta-evaluation of these programs provides a synthesis and update of existing research on this topic, and identifies the current gaps in evidence.

This project mapped current Australian “Safe at Home” programs and approaches. Through this process, the researchers identified existing evaluations and reviews on which to undertake a meta-evaluation. These were examined to determine the important program characteristics, outcome domains and research methods in evaluations of Australian “safe at home” programs, including the strengths and weaknesses of previous evaluations.

The researchers synthesised these evaluations and literature to produce evidence of the effectiveness of “safe at home” models and identified what key features of these models are most effective in achieving safety for women and their children.

The project also made recommendations concerning key minimum elements to include in future evaluations and what minimum datasets would be required to provide meaningful data for individual programs and support the comparison of future evaluations.

The project provided evidence about how women who have experienced domestic and family violence can best be supported to stay safe in their own homes.


Researchers

Principal chief investigator:

Associate Professor Jan Breckenridge, Co-convenor, Gendered Violence Research Network and School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, University of New South Wales.

Chief investigators:

Professor Donna Chung, Head of Social Work, School of Occupational Therapy and Social Work, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University.

Dr Angela Spinney, Research Fellow/Lecturer, Swinburne Institute of Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology.

Dr Carole Zufferey, Lecturer in Social Work, School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy University of South Australia.

Research partners / team members:

Ms Paula Bennett, Manager, Gendered Violence Research Network, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales.


Downloads

Publications

National mapping and meta-evaluation outlining key features of effective "safe at home" programs that enhance safety and prevent homelessness for women and their children who have experienced domestic and family violence: State of knowledge paper

Download

Publications

National mapping and meta-evaluation outlining key features of effective "safe at home" programs that enhance safety and prevent homelessness for women and their children who have experienced domestic and family violence: Final report

Download

Publications

National mapping and meta-evaluation outlining key features of effective "safe at home" programs that enhance safety and prevent homelessness for women and their children who have experienced domestic and family violence: Key findings and future direction

Download

Presentations

ANROWS Inaugural National Research Conference 2016





Slides

Download National Mapping slides Jan Breckenridge

Download

Budget

$100,000 (max.)

Funded by Australian Commonwealth, state and territory governments under ANROWS’s 2014 core grant round.

find out more

Contact ANROWS

PO Box Q389, Queen Victoria Building NSW 1230
Email: enquiries@anrows.org.au      

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