PIPA heads west
For the sake of alliteration if nothing else, in October the PIPA Project is heading to Perth!
During 9 – 13th October, we will link up with our WA Project Partners in person, as well as conduct a number of practitioner focus groups and hold a public forum along similar lines to the successful forum in Victoria earlier this year. This forum is kindly being hosted by Edith Cowan University and will bring together practitioners, academics, Magistrates, police and others to discuss the response to adolescent family violence in the WA context. At the forum we will also be able to share the emerging results of our hard work in Victoria – from analysis of over 5,000 Victoria Legal Aid client records; audits of over 250 case files from Victoria Legal Aid, the Children’s Court and Youthlaw conducted by our hardworking team of Law and Social Work students and, obviously, feedback from focus groups currently running with practitioners all over the state.
By the end of 2017, PIPA will have heard from practitioners from Geelong, Ballarat, Horsham, Sunshine, Dandenong, Frankston, Moorabbin, Morwell, Wonthaggi, Seymour and the CBD to name a few sites in Victorian, as well as Armadale, Mandurah, Bunbury, Joondalup, Northbridge and Geraldton in WA. Simultaneous interviews and focus groups are occurring in Tasmania through our Project Partners there, University of Tasmania. These focus groups are combining police, lawyers, youth justice workers, drug and alcohol workers, family services and specialist family violence services to name but a few to explore the available response in their regions, to identify referral pathways and highlight gaps. The response to the PIPA Project from practitioners has been incredibly encouraging and the desire for a more considered, holistic response for young people and families very clear. Watch this space in the next CIJ newsletter for a link to the Perth forum audio and a report on the findings from the research so far.
