Evaluation of innovative models of interagency partnerships, collaboration, coordination and/or integrated responses to family and/or sexual violence against women in Australian Indigenous communities

The high prevalence and incidence of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is well-documented.

Over the past decade, there have been an increasing number of Indigenous-specific responses to violence against women, including interagency collaborations, integrated responses and a range of innovative, holistic, and community driven (grass roots) responses. Robust, formal evaluations of such programs are needed and evaluations need to be at various intervals in the lifespan of a program and across a spectrum of different types of approaches designed to reduce the incidence of family violence.

This project was based on an analysis of whole-of-family and whole-of-community approaches within some Indigenous communities that address the needs of women, children, men and extended family members as a family unit.

It analysed how government interagency processes can engage with, and include, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in partnerships to resolve domestic and family violence and sexual assault including through community-led committees.

The project includes comparative evaluations of approaches in different Indigenous Australian communities that can identify key elements of successful approaches that may apply in more than one context (i.e. in a different Indigenous community to those included in the study). It was conducted in collaboration with one or more Indigenous communities and/or Indigenous organisations.