Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence Responses in Multicultural Communities

As part of funding under the FDSV Responses, for the period 2022-24, 12 projects have been completed to test best practice models for addressing the barriers that Victorians from multicultural communities experience when accessing family and sexual violence supports. A range of activities have been delivered through partnerships between the family violence service sector and multicultural, faith-based, and ethno-specific communities. The aim of the activities has been to build workforce capability to engage with, and support access to services for, those communities. Initiatives have included developing out-posting arrangements, policy and practice change, a new youth engagement framework to support responses to family violence disclosures, and the development of improved and supported referral processes.

For the period 2024-2027, 17 partnership projects will be delivered through collaboration between multicultural community organisations and specialist family violence or sexual violence services. This includes 10 projects with a focus on family violence and 7 projects with a specific focus on sexual violence in multicultural communities, and supporting help seeking and awareness of service support. Partnership projects are focused on further enhancing inclusion and access to specialist services for victim-survivors from multicultural communities. They also focus on system coordination between services to ensure victim-survivors can access culturally safe, culturally inclusive support as well as organisational development.

Initiatives include:

• co-case management
• co-location models
• integrated policy, practice and training across the service system
• coordination with grassroots multicultural groups and leaders.

In the sexual violence stream, there is an additional focus on awareness raising and supporting community conversations on sexual violence and how to seek support.