Webinar: Sadie’s story – Helping women affected by domestic and family violence navigate a fragmented system

ANROWS and the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) invite practitioners to a webinar exploring how services can help women navigate multiple systems to ensure they receive the support they need.

This webinar focuses on one woman’s story of domestic and family violence (DFV). Sadie (not her real name) is an Aboriginal woman and mother of two. Her story sheds light on how fragmented service systems can often fail to meet women’s needs, and may even exacerbate the challenges they experience at the intersection of gender and racial inequality.

This webinar will discuss Sadie’s story and reflect on research that has highlighted:

• the impact of DFV on parenting and parent–child relationships
• the challenges for women of trying to navigate a fragmented service system
• the need to improve practices to better meet the needs of women and children.

This webinar will be of interest to professionals working in the fields of DFV, family law, child protection, family relationship services, housing and related services.

WATCH

Presenters

Rae Kaspiew

Rae is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS). Rae is a leading socio-legal researcher with particular expertise in family law and family violence. She manages the Family Law and Family Violence research program at AIFS. She has been involved in an extensive range of studies and is the lead author of two large-scale evaluations of successive waves of reforms in family law (the 2006 and 2012 reforms). Rae is also on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Family Law and is second author on a family law textbook used widely in universities.

Rae was Principal Legal Officer on the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Family Law Inquiry (2017–19). She was on the Advisory Group for the Australian Law Reform Commission’s reference on safeguarding the rights of older Australians (2016). Other advisory roles have included membership of the Family Law Council (2009–16), a body that provides policy advice on family law to the federal Attorney-General and as a member of the Violence Against Women Advisory Group (2009–11) that advised the federal Minister for the Status of Women on the implementation of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women.

Emma Rogers

Emma has 25 years of experience working in the social work field in Australia and the UK in the areas of domestic and family violence (women’s refuges), mental health, youth homelessness, asylum seeker support and child protection. Emma currently works for the Queensland Government Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women as a Regional Domestic and Family Violence Senior Practitioner. For the past three years she has developed and worked in the Walking with Dads Program – an innovative program that has a strong partnering foundation with mothers and children to create interventions for fathers, to hold them accountable and responsible for their destructive behaviours and to increase safety and wellbeing for families. Emma is also a certified Safe & Together trainer.

Jackie Wruck

Jackie is a proud Aboriginal Yindinji woman from Far North Queensland, Yarrabah region and Domestic and Family Violence Senior Project Officer for South East Queensland (North) Region for the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships, Queensland. Jackie’s own experience of domestic and family violence led her to becoming a certified Safe and Together trainer, and a facilitator and cultural advisor for the Walking with Dads program that works with, and walks with, fathers who have perpetrated violence in their families. Working with families all of her life, Jackie is a vocal advocate for families and passionate about keeping children out of the child protection system and making sure families’ voices are heard.