Safe and Equal partners with Berry Street to create practitioner resources around family violence

Safe and Equal, a peak body for specialist family violence services that provide support to victim survivors in Victoria, has partnered with a variety of specialist organisations to develop a suite of practitioner resources to support tailored and inclusive responses to family violence occurring across diverse communities and contexts.

Organisations including Djirra, Berry Street’s Y-Change Lived Experience Consultants, Switchboard, inTouch, Women with Disabilities Victoria, Seniors Rights Victoria, and Flatout worked with Safe and Equal on the project.

“Family violence is an intersectional social problem with far-reaching impacts that reinforce structural disadvantage and marginalisation across many different communities,” a Safe and Equal spokesperson explained. 

“While family violence can impact anyone, there are social, structural and systemic barriers caused by historic and ongoing discrimination that has seen certain groups excluded from or unable to access services, government programs, and equitable justice responses.”

Children and young people 

In response to those barriers, where they concern children and young people, Safe and Equal worked with Berry Street’s Y-Change Lived Experience Consultants to provide practice guidance for tailored and inclusive family violence support. 

The voices of children and young people impacted by family violence are often invisible. As such, the guide for family violence practitioners working to support children and young people has been co-produced with Berry Street’s Y-Change Lived Experience Consultants – a group of young people aged 18-30 with lived experience of socioeconomic and systemic disadvantage who challenge the thinking and practices of social systems through their advocacy and leadership. 

The guide explores key considerations for supporting children and young people with lived experiences of family violence and features several practical activities which can be done with children or young people. The guide is complimented by a colouring-in activity that was also co-produced by Y-Change. The artwork and colouring-in activities were created by artist and illustrator, Chadai Chamoun. 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

Practice guidance for supporting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people was developed with Djirra as a self-directed learning guide written from the perspective of an Aboriginal writer with experiences and input from other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. It is prepared predominantly for family violence practitioners who are not Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and is designed to be a starting point to spark more questions, think about existing practices, and prompt further learning. 

Other resources in the suite focus on: 

• Supporting LGBTIQA+ People
• Supporting criminalised women
• Supporting people from migrant and refugee communities
• Supporting people with disability
• Supporting older people. 

To learn more about the work of Safe and Equal, please see here.