Improved collaboration between child protection, domestic violence, and legal services is needed to help authorities better ensure the safety of women and their children. 

This is one of a number of findings from research commissioned by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) into domestic violence and collaborative responses. The research will be explored at a national symposium in Perth this Friday, which is to be opened by Western Australia’s Minister for Child Protection and Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence Simone McGurk.

Among the presenters at the symposium will be University of Melbourne’s domestic and family violence expert Professor Cathy Humphreys, who authored the research report PAThways and Research Into Collaborative Inter-Agency practice (The PATRICIA Project). 

The symposium is the culmination of ANROWS’s work as part of the 16 Days of Activism to End Violence Against Women, an international effort leading up to Human Rights Day on 10 December, and will also feature insights from ANROWS-funded research into perpetrator interventions. 

Prior to the launch of the symposium, ANROWS will facilitate a high-level roundtable breakfast briefing with Minister McGurk on domestic and family violence research. 

Minister McGurk said that it was important that Western Australia’s work was able to draw on the evidence base to inform policy development and design.

“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done here in WA but we can all be part of the solution,” she said. “We need to change the conversation in our homes, communities, and workplaces to stop family and domestic violence.”

ANROWS CEO Dr Heather Nancarrow said “We’re excited to bring this research to Western Australia, which has made great inroads and investment in confronting these serious issues”. 

The topics to be covered at the symposium include:

• Silos and gaps and collaborative practice.
• Using the perpetrator-focused Safe and Together framework in response to domestic and family violence.
• Focus on fathering and perpetrator interventions.
• Considerations for working with family violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
• Best practice principles for interventions with domestic violence perpetrators from refugee backgrounds. 

Minister McGurk, Dr Nancarrow, and Professor Humphreys will be available for interview.

WHAT: Child protection, domestic violence, and perpetrator interventions: Meeting the challenges of collaboration

WHEN: 10.00 am – 4.00 pm, Friday 8 December 2017

WHERE: City West Receptions , 45 Plaistowe Mews, West Perth

Media enquiries: Michele Robinson, Director Evidence to Action, ANROWS

Phone: +61 417 780 556 Email: [email protected]

• Share