Time for Action: The National Council's Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2009–2021 - A Snapshot 

The experiences and needs of women and their children are positioned as central to the Plan through its vision, its values and its principles. The Plan recognises that:

• Women want their communities to be free from violence where they and their families live in safety and enjoy strong and respectful relationships.
• Women, in all their diversity, who are at risk of violence, are experiencing violence or are trying to recover from the trauma of violence, should have access to easily identified, appropriate and skilled services.
• If a woman needs help through the legal system, it must treat her with dignity and hold the perpetrator accountable for his behaviour.
• Perpetrators must accept responsibility for changing their behaviour and participate in accessible, effective, evidence-based programs to ensure their attitudes change and their violence is not repeated.
• Achieving these goals hinges on the entire system joining seamlessly, with all the parts working together, to assure women and their children that they will be safe and live free from violence.

Time for Action proposes sweeping changes between now and 2021. It sets a framework for social change through the achievement of six outcomes, delivered through 25 strategies and 117 actions. Of these 117 actions, Council identifies 20 actions for urgent implementation to quickly achieve real benefits for women and their children. The multiplicity of actions are borne from Council’s comprehensive consultation process, and whilst the actions themselves will significantly contribute to achieving Council’s vision, the reality is there will necessarily be variability of engagement with these actions across jurisdictions.

The key message therefore to governments is that it is time for action to:

• Bring forward the new era of federalism through governments uplifting their performance to break through entrenched patterns of violence against women and their children, repairing the fragmentation and inconsistency across the service system, and demonstrating leadership on the international stage in achieving the goals of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women.
• Close the Gap for Indigenous women who are 35 times more likely to suffer family violence and sustain serious injury requiring hospitalisation, and 10 times more likely to die due to family violence, than non-Indigenous women.
• Enhance the role of the community sector in preventing violence against women and their children through realistic and sustained funding for services and an investment in skilling and supporting the workforce to achieve holistic responses to the complex of needs of women and their children who are victims of violence.
• Stop the intergenerational cycle of violence through a focus on children and young people that both protects their safety as well as skills them to build and sustain respectful, ethical, non-violent relationships for the future.
• Create a fair Australia by challenging the social mores of our communities and create a new ethos that ensures respect, safety and equality for all.
• Analyse the cost benefit of the current proportion of investment in crisis services and identify opportunities for reinvestment in prevention and early intervention.
• Collectively develop baseline data, evidence and clear targets to galvanise effort for reform and investment for effective action in building safe communities.

[ top ]

Communities are safe and free from violence

Everyone in Australia - individuals, families, communities, business and all levels of government - must take responsibility for preventing violence against women and their children. It is essential that we all recognise that this is not just a women’s issue. Men also are required to play a key role in preventing violence and ensuring that our society, particularly our women and children, are safe and free from violence. Men speaking out in opposition to violence against women are critical to achieving cultural change in attitudes and behaviour towards women.

The urgent actions recommended by Council for immediate implementation to support the achievement of this outcome are:

• 1.1.1 Develop a national primary prevention framework that draws on international and national evidence of the most effective strategies for preventing violence against women, and prioritises key settings and population groups in which to coordinate primary prevention initiatives and actions.
• 1.1.2 Establish a National Centre of Excellence for the Prevention of Violence against Women to lead thinking, broker knowledge, co-ordinate a national research agenda and data collection effort, provide a national and international primary point of contact, and monitor and report on the impact of the Plan of Action.
• 1.1.3 For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, in particular in isolated and remote communities, increase access to appropriate housing to reduce overcrowding and the incidence of sexual assault and family violence that may arise from such situations.
• 1.3.1 Recognising that most men are not violent towards women, encourage them to take a role in countering such violence and promote understandings of, and support for, expressions of masculinities that are non-violent. For example:
  • Increasingly target men and boys as agents promoting an end to men's violence against women (such as in the White Ribbon Campaign and programs in clubs and sporting and other organisations).
  • Encourage men who play a leading role in the community, such as Members of Parliament, government officials, academics, business or community leaders, when making a public address, in addition to acknowledging the traditional owners of the land, to declare that they reject violence against women and their children in any form.
• 1.5.1 Include “Communities are safe and free from violence” as the fifth Priority Goal under the Promoting and Maintaining Good Health National Research Priority.

Relationships are respectful

Respectful interpersonal relationships form the basis of a safe community. It is never too early to learn the values and practice the skills that enable people to develop and sustain ethical, non-violent relationships. While these values and skills are assumed to be learned in the home, this is not always the case. Indeed, given the number of women and children who experience and/or witness violence in their home, respectful relationships education through school, recreational, faith-based, sporting, formal care and other environments influential on young people’s development is critical. Supporting parents to be effective in raising respectful children, and skilling teachers, youth workers and community leaders to educate for respectful relationships is also critical to achieving the safety and wellbeing of all individuals, families and communities.

The urgent actions recommended by Council for immediate implementation to support the achievement of this outcome are:

• 2.1.1 As part of developing a National Primary Prevention Framework (preventing violence against women), build the capacity of the prevention education sector by researching and evaluating primary prevention outcomes, develop standards and indicators for best practice programs, and develop tools and information products to support programs in different settings.
• 2.2.1 Develop, trial, implement and evaluate educational programs, in a range of settings, based on best practice principles, for pre-schoolers, children, adolescents and adults that encourage respectful relationships and protective behaviours.

Services meet the needs of women and their children

The first door must be the right door for women and their children seeking support as a result of violence. The sector responsible for delivering services to women and their children shows great flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness. The sector’s workforce, however, needs strengthening and strategic planning for the future so that services can attract and retain the right workers with the right skills. Services also need to be confident about sustained and adequate funding to support their delivery of high quality and tailored responses that meet the holistic, often complex and multi-dimensional physical, practical and emotional needs of victims and their families.

The urgent actions recommended by Council for immediate implementation to support the achievement of this outcome are:

• 3.2.1 Governments at all levels support the full implementation of strategies concerning domestic and family violence in The Road Home: A National Approach to Reducing Homelessness and in Outcome 4: ‘Responses are just’ of this Plan of Action.
• 3.2.2 Audit crisis accommodation services to determine their accessibility and safety for all women experiencing violence with a particular focus on rural women, girls and young women, older women, women with adolescent boys, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, women with disabilities, women with no income, immigrant and refugee women and women with mental health, alcohol and/or drug dependence issues.
• 3.3.1 Following consultation with the sector, establish a professional national telephone and online crisis support service for anyone in Australia who has experienced, or is at risk of, sexual assault and/or domestic and family violence.The service should integrate and coordinate with existing services in all States and Territories, offer professional counselling, provide information and referrals, use best practice technology, link with other 1800 numbers, have direct links with relevant local and state services, and provide professional supervision and advice to staff in services in isolated and remote areas.
• 3.3.2 Provide funding to support a national network of locally developed healing centres and other emerging initiatives and support services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in urban, regional, rural, remote and isolated areas, to address their experiences of trauma and violence.
• 3.3.4 Ensure children who are living with, or have lived with, sexual assault and/or domestic and family violence do not have their safety, wellbeing, support and counselling needs compromised, and that all interventions are in accord with the safety and wellbeing of their mothers.

[ top ]

Responses are just

As long as sexual assault and domestic and family violence persist, Australia is obligated under national and international conventions to legislate against it; to prosecute breaches of laws; and to provide appropriate civil law responses that protect against further violence, and promote recovery and wellbeing. While there have been strong improvements in these areas across governments, some laws remain inadequate, are not applied in the way they were intended, can re-victimise women within the justice process, or are not accessible and equitable. Additionally, the interaction of some laws that are particularly relevant to victims and their families - including family, child protection, and State and Territory domestic violence and sexual assault laws – may undermine the safety of women and their children.

The urgent actions recommended by Council for immediate implementation to support the achievement of this outcome are:

• 4.1.1 The Australian Government takes leadership to ensure the impending United Nations Convention on Victims Rights (expected in 2011) fully reflects the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women and principles of other human rights conventions, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which Australia has ratified.
• 4.2.1 Establish a reference for the Australian Law Reform Commission to examine present State/Territory domestic and family violence, and child protection legislation, and federal family law, and propose solutions to ensure that the inter-relationship in the application of these laws works to protect women and children from violence.
• 4.3.1 Establish a mechanism that enables automatic national registration of domestic and family violence protection orders and subsequent variations, adaptations and modifications occurring anywhere in Australia or New Zealand; and consider the need to include police-issued domestic and family violence orders on the national register.
• 4.3.2 Establish or build on emerging homicide/fatality review processes in all States and Territories to review deaths that result from domestic and family violence so as to identify factors leading to these deaths, improve system responses and respond to service gaps. As part of this process ensure all information is, or recommendations are, centrally recorded and available for information exchange.

Perpetrators stop their violence

Perpetrators of violence must be held accountable for their behaviour and the consequences of their violence. The evidence about what works in stopping men’s violence needs to be developed. A significant investment is required in designing, implementing and evaluating perpetrator treatment programs, delivered in custodial and community settings, that achieve sustained positive attitude and behaviour change. Comprehensive and skilfully managed processes to support the reintegration of perpetrators into their communities where appropriate, is also required to sustain long-term non-violent behaviour.

The urgent actions recommended by Council for immediate implementation to support the achievement of this outcome are:

• 5.1.1 Fund and develop a correctional facility-specific domestic violence behaviour change program to be tested in Australian prisons.
• 5.2.1 Support remote communities to agree to develop alternative places to which men are able to go, or be taken to, at the earliest point that violent behaviour or its precursors are exhibited.
• 5.4.1 Fund and deliver a perpetrator research agenda, including longitudinal research that has a particular focus on: what changes problem behaviour; what maintains behaviour change; the utility of risk assessment tools; the effectiveness of various recidivism reduction strategies; and takes account of different offender characteristics and cultures.

Systems work together effectively

A central objective of the Council’s Plan is to establish and foster a coherent response to the problem of violence against women and their children. Currently, service planning, program design, funding, evaluation and reporting are chronically fragmented and lead to inefficient and ineffective outcomes for clients, for agencies and for governments. This seems to be the result of planning approaches and services having been designed for single problems and the establishment of organisations that are targeted to particular client groups.

The result is gaps in service provision on the one hand, duplication of services on the other, and competition for scarce funding in the middle. Planning for partnership and collaboration at the whole-of-government level must be championed at the highest levels of government and within the community, and there needs to be designated resources that enable collaborative efforts and investments to work for the benefit of women and their families.

The urgent actions recommended by Council for immediate implementation to support the achievement of this outcome are:

• 6.1.1 Commonwealth, State, Territory and Local government agencies work collaboratively to develop policy, planning and service delivery responses for sexual assault, domestic and family violence; and establish performance reporting measures that recognise and encourage collaborative achievements and identify fragmented delivery of programs and/or services.