Building from Strength: 10-Year Industry Plan for Family Violence Prevention

The Second Rolling Action Plan, Framing the Future was launched in 2024 to respond to the critical challenges facing the family violence and sexual assault workforce, and the broader community services workforce, especially regarding securing a strong supply of new workers and retaining them in the sector. For more information see Framing the Future: Second rolling action plan.

Work has commenced to build the number of skilled and diverse workers to meet the growing demand for services. This includes delivery of the following programs and resources:

• Workforce Vacancies Demonstration Program – 4 funded projects to test innovative local activities to address vacancy rates through attraction, recruitment and retention.
• Fast Track and Lead and Adapt leadership programs – to build the capability of future and current leaders to navigate and lead through change.
• Best Practice Supervision Guidelines and videos – to guide organisations in providing regular, effective supervision to their workforce.
• Community and Social Services Graduate Program – a structured professional graduate program across community services to provide a supported pathway for graduates into work. Findings will inform future efforts to build a skilled and sustainable workforce of specialist prevention and response sectors.
• Understanding workforce and related pathways to working with people using family violence (PUFV) – This project seeks to better understand the specialist workforce by mapping the education, training and employment pathways into careers in working with PUFV.
• Workers with lived and living experience project – to develop guidance on recruiting, supporting and valuing staff with lived/living experience in the family and sexual violence workforce.
• Future workforce program – to explore what the workforce of the future could look like by testing new job roles and functions, understanding barriers and enablers for better productivity for client outcomes.
• Review of the Mandatory Minimum Qualifications - The Mandatory Minimum Qualifications Policy for specialist family violence practitioners, introduced in July 2021, has been evaluated as a key action in Framing the Future. The Victorian Government is working closely with the family violence sector to make changes to the policy based on the evaluation’s recommendations and findings.
• Revised Capability Frameworks for Family Violence and Sexual Violence - To help strengthen and embed the capability of the service system to respond to and prevent family violence and sexual assault.
• Roll out of accredited training – to provide units of competency in family violence risk assessment and management at identification and intermediate level, and prevention of family violence and violence against women.