THE boss of a regional women’s health organisation has described the findings and recommendations from the Royal Commission into Family Violence as “comprehensive”.
Women’s Health Loddon Mallee chief executive officer, Linda Beilharz said the review provides an “outstanding” scope to consider the protection of victims, responding to perpetrators and prevention.
“If implemented as intended our response to family violence as a Victorian community will be considerably better than we’ve had,” she said.
The 2000-page report, attached with 227 recommendations, handed down to State Parliament earlier this month, comes after Gannawarra Shire Council recently pledged to take a stand to stop violence against women.
Ms Beilharz said the vast bulk of the recommendations that focus on how incidents are responded to will prevent some violence as repeat perpetrators will be picked up and breaches of orders will be reduced.
“It will encourage the system to intervene earlier and be more integrated, such as sharing information between services,” she said.
“Importantly, the commission has also recognised that prevention programs are most effective when they form part of a coordinated approach. We will never prevent violence against women through disparate projects with short-term funding. To reduce and ultimately eliminate violence against women, we need a coherent, broadly supported strategy that can guide both policy and practice.”
Ms Beilharz said she is also pleased that the commission has reinforced the importance of primary prevention and of stopping violence against women and their children before it starts by “addressing the social norms and institutional practices that support and give rise to it”.
Ms Beilharz said victims of violence are brought more strongly into the process of designing systems and services.
The report recognises that the current response to family violence assumes that women and children will leave their homes and makes recommendations for women and children’s safety should they choose to stay.
Ms Beilharz said the most alarming read from the report was the personal accounts and evidence provided to the commission.
“Some of these are heartbreaking whereby women and children have experienced family violence for years and felt that they had no supports or felt responsible for the violence they were experiencing,” she said.
“When they did disclose to friends or family, they got told to just leave and were often blamed for what was happening to them. Many of them talked about how the violence escalated and how the system had let them down.”
Women’s Health Loddon Mallee will have a key role to play in providing information and referral to rural women and preventing family violence in the community through a number of programs.
