The Centre for Family Research and Evaluation (CFRE), in partnership with RMIT University’s Centre for Innovative Justice (CIJ) and the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), has recently commenced Future-proofing Safety, a major research project examining how family violence in Victoria has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Our research will span the breadth of Victoria’s whole community services system to understand how services have responded to family violence during COVID-19. The project will look at how services adapted, what gaps and weaknesses were surfaced, and how services responded to the crisis. It will also take a future focus by providing tangible recommendations on how we can future-proof Victoria’s responses to family violence post-COVID.
Future-proofing Safety began in August 2021 and is funded by Family Safety Victoria.
Working with the sector
Our innovative approach and partnership model prioritises sector input and leadership across the project. We hope to work collaboratively with partners across the community sector to shape the future of Victoria’s systemic responses to family violence.
Peaks, organisations and practitioners will have opportunities to participate throughout the life of the project through focus groups, a practitioner survey and through a series of workshops.
Sharing our findings
We will share emerging findings throughout the life of the project through:
- two interactive reports in December 2021 and March 2022
- workshops with the sector to unpack our findings
- a research report and a crisis readiness framework in October 2022.
Please check back here to keep abreast of project developments and reports.
Project updates
As a component of the project, CFRE has started working with sector partners Good Shepherd and Women’s Health West to compile a series of organisational case-studies. We will share these in our first interactive report in early December 2021.
Contact
For more information on the project or to be added to our mailing list, please email cfre@ds.org.au.