Designed by the South Sudanese community, CatholicCare and Toowoomba’s Refugee and Migrant Support (TRAMS) service, the project framework integrates community-based primary prevention activities that enable the community to effectively respond to violence against its women and children, culturally appropriate early intervention measures and culturally sensitive approaches to the provision of crisis support. The project’s design and delivery partners include Toowoomba’s local government, agencies, police, and key mainstream social and support services.

The attitudes and culturally sensitive practices of key stakeholders and DFV services will be mapped using cultural competency needs analysis, regular meetings and staff exchange. Community awareness and education on DFV will be evaluated through client feedback questionnaires.

The South Sudanese community and key stakeholders will design and implement new culturally sensitive pathways for South Sudanese women to access support for DFV issues.

Safer Pathways for CALD Women includes:

• “Life with Boundaries” support group for CALD women to assist them to address the impact of domestic and family violence. The group meets once a month.
• A series of workshops and a toolkit for CALD women to equip them with skills and knowledge about their rights and how to stay safe, as well as to provide information about the support and services available.
• Community education and engaging CALD volunteers to raise awareness about domestic and family violence in their communities.

Through this program, we will support CALD women and men that are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, family and domestic violence, to be informed and to be able to access the support that they need. This will occur through:

1. the delivery of a Human Rights Train the Trainer program based on the resources developed by UNSW and delivered by members of each CALD community that will be employed and trained by TMSG;
2. a worker exchange between TMSG and DV and family support services;
3. delivery of community forums and service provider training; and
4. engagement in action research with ANROWS.

This project will explore how understandings of human rights influence settlement in Australia and will provide educational opportunities to CALD communities and service providers to address:

• barriers encountered by CALD people who have/are experiencing domestic and family violence when they attempt to access services; and
• difficulties/unconscious biases that community organisations may experience in engaging with CALD people, which include, but are not limited to, how to be more culturally and linguistically responsive.

• the collection of participant data; feedback from the community human rights trainers and from participants after each session;
• reports from the trainers that will include discussions and observations from each session;
• follow-up phone interviews with trainers; and
• follow-up interviews with a random sampling of participants from each cultural/language group.

All sessions and interviews will be conducted with interpreters/bilingual support workers and will be recorded.

Additionally, feedback from community forums, service provider workshops and anecdotal evidence from local domestic and family violence services in Townsville will be documented, as well as the recruitment process of the community trainers, including notes from their interviews and answers to selection criteria questions.

Project officers will engage with domestic and family violence services, local CALD communities and services that CALD communities use, to raise awareness of domestic and family violence, improve access to supports and services, provide direct referrals for women to domestic violence services and promote CALD community leaders’ support of healthy and respectful family relationships in a public campaign.

Information will be provided by holding group information sessions for CALD women and local ethnic groups, thereby increasing awareness through mediums such as: social media and conventional media streams (radio/newspaper); promoting services and information at local events through stalls and displays; and engaging with community and CALD stakeholders to provide referrals to the service.

The project simultaneously aims to improve the practices of mainstream service providers to be culturally safe for CALD women and better meet their needs. This will be achieved through an online secured page for service provider members and will host written information, case studies and webinars.

With our service provider partners, we will be sending out practice surveys and collating information through feedback, correspondence and meetings.

This will be achieved by: empowering the women with knowledge and understanding of Australian laws, rights and cultural norms in relation to family violence and sexual assault; building up skills in identifying and responding to family violence in culturally and linguistically diverse communities; contributing to an understanding of referral pathways in immigrant and refugee specific organisations and mainstream health providers working with refugee and immigrant women; and supporting family violence and sexual assault services to provide culturally appropriate, respectful and flexible service responses when needed.

Enhancing the accessibility and delivery of culturally appropriate family violence and sexual assault support services requires a strategy that is implemented at the individual, community, practitioner and service levels in order to provide holistic support. The Safer Pathways project will, therefore, work closely with two other related projects in the region – the It Takes Courage project run by Women’s Health Grampians, and the Making the Links – Building Safer Pathways for CALD Women in Regional Victoria project run by Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health. This aims to maximise resources and outcomes, and, most importantly, build strong and sustainable service pathways for multicultural community members and service providers.

We will also explore creating a peer support network for refugee and immigrant women. Peer support mentors would be an important component of a sustainability plan and a way to have ongoing interactions within refugee and immigrant communities about referral pathways and processes, and to empower women (and girls) with options and support available to them. We would endeavour to train one or more CALD women from different cultural backgrounds to act as peer support mentors in the community, to inspire hope and demonstrate the possibility of recovery through respect and shared responsibility.

Focus groups, online surveys, questionnaires and feedback about events and activities are the primary research methods that will be used. Interviews and an analysis of partnerships and collaboration outcomes will also contribute to the action research in this project.

The Central Highlands Integrated Family Violence Committee and the Ballarat Regional Settlement Advocacy Committee are ready-made platforms for accessing family violence and sexual assault services in Ballarat. These platforms help to assess current local needs around providing culturally appropriate responses (cultural fitness), and ultimately, provide them with tailored training through workshops, group discussions, written/online material and inter-professional simulated learning programs. We will also access mainstream services (e.g. police, hospital, GPs, practice nurses, pharmacists and maternal and child health workers) either directly or through the local Primary Health Network, and use a similar approach to needs assessment and training.

Making the Links has established a virtual advisory group, made up of service providers in five regional areas who work closely with immigrant and refugee communities. The project will adapt MCWH’s existing, successful cross-cultural training, in-language education training and resources. These resources will be tailored for CALD women and service providers who work with them across five Victorian local government areas (LGAs): Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Mildura and Swan Hill.

Community activities with women from immigrant and refugee backgrounds will be facilitated by MCWH’s accredited bilingual health educators in-language (where applicable) over two visits. Ongoing evaluation will be conducted throughout the course of the project through: conversations with service providers, feedback from community members, reflections from bilingual health educators and survey methods. Project processes and findings will be regularly shared with stakeholders. Project plan revision and improved strategies for implementation of the project will be carried out if needed and in a timely manner.

It will also work with organisations to create systemic changes in the way that they work with CALD women, men and children to create safe places and options for women suffering violence.