A place-based approach to preventing family violence

Where we live and work can make a big difference to our experiences of health and safety as well as our access to services and support.

The Safer and Stronger Communities Pilot aims to learn more about what works best to prevent family violence in migrant and refugee communities by supporting five organisations working on prevention in different regions across Victoria.

This pilot project is a partnership between Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health, Our Watch, InTouch, University of Melbourne (project evaluation) and is funded by Multicultural Affairs (MA) and Office for Women within the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

What's the issue?

Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence highlighted that although family violence occurs across all cultural and socio-economic groups, the experience of violence and the service response to it can vary markedly. The Royal Commission’s recommendations highlighted the need to invest in actions aimed at the prevention of violence before it occurs and to ensure prevention programs reflect Victoria’s diverse community. Equally, we need to invest in monitoring and evaluation activities to build a strong evidence base that can help design effective prevention strategies in the future. To read more about the relationship between place and migrant women’s experiences of gender inequality and violence, read our ASPIRE Project findings or visit our news page for articles, submissions and updates about the latest findings and research.

How will the project make a difference?

The Safer and Stronger Communities Pilot will play an important role in building the evidence base for what primary prevention strategies and activities work best and why, so that we can continue to develop stronger and safer community programs for diverse communities across Victoria in the future.

The pilot will also support and strengthen local partnerships by:

  • Building organisations’ capacity to use an intersectional approach to implementing the Workplace Equality and Respect standards
  • Building prevention expertise of organisations, employees and partners to work meaningfully with people from migrant and refugee backgrounds
  • Enabling safer family violence referral pathways for people from migrant and refugee backgrounds
  • Engaging migrant and refugee communities and building their capacity to play a greater role in co-designing and leading primary prevention initiatives.

Which organisations are part of the pilot?

The Safer and Stronger Communities Pilot supports five organisations (three metropolitan and two regional) working with migrant and refugee communities:

For more information about the project and how you can get involved please contact info@mcwh.com.au or via our contact page.

The Safer and Stronger Communities Pilot is a partnership between Multicultural Centre for Women's Health and Our Watch and is funded by the Multicultural Affairs (MA) Division of the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet.