Anglicare Victoria has welcomed the State Government’s $572 million funding response to the Royal Commission Recommendations into Family Violence and its bold commitment to preventing children and families falling through the gaps.
The announcement, which incorporates $168 million for the Roadmap for Reform: strong families, safe children initiative, will provide prevention and early intervention services to vulnerable families and children, increased in-home support, extra child protection workers, more culturally-sensitive support for Aboriginal children, and a boost to the number of foster and kinship carers.
The funding has also promised more housing and crisis refuges, and much-needed support programs for victims of family violence.
Chief Executive Paul McDonald said the Andrews Government’s timely pledge to address the Royal Commission’s 65 most urgent recommendations as the first step in the long-term process to fix a ‘broken system’, must be applauded.
“The first step to overhauling Australia’s family violence support system is the biggest and the most important,” Mr McDonald said.
“Children and families are most precious assets – but they are also our most vulnerable. We see this each day as approximately half of all our clients come to us for family violence support.”
Mr McDonald also welcomed today’s announcement of a Family Violence Housing Assistance Implementation Taskforce, to provide advice to government on housing solutions for victims.
Anglicare Victoria runs more than 20 programs which directly assist people facing family violence. They include:
- Beyond The Violence – an eight week program for children and their parents, for those currently in and those having left, a family violence situation;
- Mum’s Guiding Kids Forward – a six week parenting program to support mums who have experienced family violence;
- Breaking the Cycle – a group program created to address the issue of adolescent and sibling violence in the home;
- Parenting in Australia – a program for refugees and other migrants focused on parenting and respectful relationships;
- Men’s Behaviour Change– a group based program focussed on changing the behaviour of male perpetrators of family violence; and
- Dad’s Putting Kids First – a parenting program for men who have competed the men’s behaviour change program.
The Royal Commission identified Anglicare Victoria’s Beyond the Violence program as one of the few programs in Victoria that directly work with both the mother and child to strengthen the parent-child relationship and rebuild family relationships after experiencing family violence. Support for both mother and child was identified by the Royal Commission as “Best Practice”.
