Future-proofing Safety – A major project examining family violence in Victoria during COVID-19
The CIJ are proud to partner with Drummond Street’s Centre for Family Research and Evaluation (CFRE) and the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) on the Futureproofing Safety – COVID-19 and family violence in Victoria project.
Commissioned by Family Safety Victoria, this ambitious mixed methods project will explore how family violence in Victoria has changed since the COVID-19 pandemic began. The research will span the breadth of Victoria’s community services system to understand how services have responded to family violence during COVID-19, and recognising that people who experienced or used family violence during this period may have accessed the service system in a range of ways other than through specialist family violence services.
The project will look at how services adapted, what gaps and weaknesses 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.
The CIJ will be responsible for multiple strands of data collection and analysis, including:
- place-based and discipline-specific sector focus groups to explore the experiences of practitioners delivering services in the context of COVID-19;
- a case file review of MARAM risk assessment tools and associated safety plans to identify themes and patterns in relation to people’s presenting needs, risk factors and service pathways; and
- interviews with people who experienced and/or used family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand the needs and goals with which they presented to the system, and the extent to which these were able to be met.