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Findings from the National Evaluation of Partnerships Phase 1

Partnerships Against Domestic Violence has begun to deliver substantial dividends on its initial investment over $25 million under Phase 1. It has stimulated and facilitated wide-ranging involvement, activities and achievements, and has substantially increased national capacity in the area of domestic violence.

General findings from the national evaluation

Specific findings are presented within six main themes:

Working with women
Working with children and young people
Working with men
Indigenous family violence
Community awareness and education
Information and infrastructure

General findings

In providing a strong national focus on domestic violence issues, the first phase of Partnerships has fostered interchange of ideas, broadened horizons, and placed on the national agenda issues that require the commitment of various levels and departments of government.

The collaboration and trust across jurisdictions and between sectors that has been achieved at a practical and policy level under Partnerships reflect the strong commitment of all involved. A review of the international literature suggests that Australia is the first country to achieve this level of collaboration at the national policy in the area of domestic violence, and to achieve a common understanding, at this level, of the theoretical frameworks that underpin action.

Open sharing of knowledge and experience has enabled the partners, through a diverse and often innovated range of projects and research, to make great strides in understanding the most effective ways to prevent and respond to domestic violence. Partnerships has identified and disseminated good practice arising from its projects and from work done within the State and Territories, consolidating what is already known about domestic violence and furthering the strategies of prevention and early intervention. As a consequence, Partnerships is bringing a consistent approach to domestic violence services, policy and interventions.

Based on its substantial achievements to date, Partnerships has the potential to achieve major change across Australian society as Phase 2 gets under way. If the knowledge gained through Partnerships Phase 1 is to benefit the whole Australian population, the next step is to apply it to a mainstream model of service delivery, to bring about sustainable reform across the wider service system.

In summary, the first phase of Partnerships resulted in:

Partnerships provides a solid foundation for future action and has shown that:

The Partnerships process

In addition to the findings on particular population groups, there were key findings about processes utilised in Partnerships phase 1. The Taskforce was in itself a valuable strategy for ensuring domestic violence was considered at the national, Commonwealth and State/Territory levels. Participants reported that there was a greater ability to effect change through a national partnership than there would be working at the various levels individually. Key features in the success of the Taskforce in about partnershipshave been:

Opportunities for integration with other Government initiatives

Partnerships is consistent, in both its collaborative approach and its broad, with a range of other bipartisan government initiatives and strategies that target challenging behaviours, and adverse social conditions and life events.

These initiatives include:

Most of these initiatives have identified common causal factors, risk factors, patterns of risk and co-morbidities in relation to the issues they are addressing and, in most cases, the approaches taken to address these are also similar.

For example research has supported the effectiveness of building capacity and resilience within families and communities and, in particular, in “at risk” children and young people, through building and promoting their sense of connectedness to family, school and community. Increasingly, programmes in these areas – both in Australia and across the world – are focussing on prevention and early intervention with at-risk groups and communities, reducing risk, building resilience and protective factors, and building the capacity of communities to address and solve their problems.

In Australia, the National Crime Prevention Pathways to Prevention pointed to the effectiveness of interventions at key transition points in the life cycle, particularly through childhood and adolescence into young adulthood. Research and pilots under Partnerships confirm the need for a life-cycle approach.

Given such similarities between these various initiatives, there has been a call for working towards, an integrated, collaborative, whole-of-government approach—a commitment to partnership processes, community capacity building and coordination. In particular these approaches need to include ways in which prevention and early intervention can be targeted at key transition points across the life span.

Specifically, there is potential to build on and extend Partnerships’ substantial achievements in collaboration to realise even greater impact and further the capacity of the Commonwealth, States and Territories to work together with resources, commitment and goodwill.

Working with women

The inherent safety risk for women and children in domestic violence situations resulted in many early services focusing on safety and crisis responses for women escaping the violence. For both police and refuge services supporting victims of domestic violence, the ongoing safety of the woman was primary.

As research and practice knowledge has grown since the 1970s, responses have become more widespread and now include: specific domestic violence legislation in States and Territories, development of policies and procedures within and between departments, professional education and development, community and school education, counselling and group work programs for women, outreach programs and programs for men who use violence.

Findings from the Partnerships Phase 1 national evaluation:

• Domestic violence is a major factor in women and children’s homelessness, disrupting employment and schooling, and can result in welfare dependency. Strategies to enable more women and children to remain safely at home need to be investigated and trialed using coordinated approaches between police and courts, women’s and men’s services. Other elements required to support this strategy include:

- Better drafting of protection orders.

- Improved police and court responses to breaches of protection orders

- Changing police practices to removing the perpetrator of violence rather than removing the victims to refuges.

- An increased range of accommodation options for men.

• Women need a range of accommodation options to meet their differing needs, most particularly access to affordable and secure medium and longer-term accommodation.

• Pregnancy is a key intervention point with women – 42 % of women who were pregnant in a past violent relationship experienced violence during pregnancy from their male partner. 20% of these women experienced violence for the first time when they were pregnant. Because women have increased contact with the service system and are less likely to be accompanied by the perpetrator (than other service system contacts), identifying and intervening with women can be more effective. Funding, training and support is required if there were to be national application of pregnancy screening.

• Many women (particularly Indigenous women) do not want to end their relationships, but want the violence to stop. Greater planning and funding is necessary to improve these women’s safety through:

- Providing victims and their support networks of family and friends with information on legal rights and options, and ways to get or give help.

- Increased access to protection orders based on prohibited behaviour, not exclusion of the perpetrator.

- Better enforcement of breaches of orders, and a change in justice and community culture that sees the woman leaving the relationship as the aim.

- Increased access to perpetrator programmes, outreach services, and safe houses for temporary accommodation when they anticipate violence.

• Mainstream violence and related service providers need to develop strategies (including undertaking cultural awareness training) to better respond to the needs of women with children, older women, women from Indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds, and women with disabilities.

• Rural and remote areas have much higher rate of domestic violence and related homicides than metropolitan areas – one study found that rural areas had 27.4% of spouse homicides with only 11% of the population of the state. Remote communities have higher incidence than rural and regional communities. Women in rural and remote areas experience more traditional community attitudes condoning violence, higher proportion of gun ownership, and less access to support services, in particular accommodation (15% have to travel overnight to the nearest women’s refuge).

• Greater collaboration by mainstream services to share information and resources, and increased use of information technology can improve access to justice, protection and support in rural and remote locations.

• There continue to be many barriers to women accessing the protection of the criminal and civil justice system. Women’s ignorance of their legal rights and options, particularly Indigenous and non-English speaking background women, should be addressed through distribution of information materials in accessible locations.

Working with children and young people

Following the emergence of domestic violence as an issue of public concern, increasing attention is being given to its impact on children and young people who witness and/or experience domestic violence. However, responses to the needs of these children and young people tend to be ad hoc, rather than systemic. Partnerships Phase 1 has attempted to address this by conducting a wide range of projects that specifically target children and young people affected by domestic violence.

The experience and impact of domestic violence on children and young people is complex and multi-faceted, including the extent of co-occurrence of exposure to other risk factors such as child abuse. Given these complexities, no simple solutions or straightforward responses will meet the needs of this group. A range of responses is required to support children and young people affected by domestic, with the aim of reducing its occurrence in future generations.

Findings from the Partnerships Phase 1 national evaluation:

• Contrary to popular belief, children, including babies in utero, and young people- suffer great harm from living in violent households- the effects are similar to those from child abuse and akin to post-traumatic stress disorder.

• Children’s recovery from harm can be greatly increased by work to build their strengths and to provide them with emotional and other life skills to choose healthy lives and relationships.

• For children experiencing violence, particularly those under school age, there is a lack of specifically targeted professional intervention services to reduce harm, particularly in violence and accommodation services.

• It is estimated that child abuse and domestic violence co-exist in between 30 and 60% of cases. Greater collaboration and information and resource sharing between the child protection and domestic violence policy and service sectors are necessary as children’s needs are frequently not being met.

• Mainstream services and many violence services, the police, courts, and counselling and contact services need to better address the particular needs of children as clients in their own right.

• Greater integration and collaboration between the justice sector and children’s, men’s and women’s services improves women’s and children’s safety, makes better use of resources and increases prosecution rates.

• Young people have the highest incidence of domestic violence of any age group. Adolescence is the stage at which most young people form their first intimate relationships.

• While research suggests that aggressive and violent responses are established prior to the age of 12, adolescence is a key point to disrupt the adoption of these responses in adult behaviour and relationships. Interventions in adolescence should build resilience and coping mechanisms, and communication skills, as well as repair harm.

• Further research is needed to identify:

- the costs and benefits to young people of choosing healthy and unhealthy behaviour and relationships.

- messages and interventions to encourage healthy behaviour and choices.

• Young people as a group are heterogenous and using a range of innovative interventions, including art, sport, music and drama, is useful to attract them to engage in relationship work.

• Schools are an appropriate location to undertake work, given their critical role in imparting culture and transmitting key learning skills. The broader school community, families, teachers and community representatives, should be involved.

• Linking schools to specialist violence community organisations provides schools and young people with access to expertise, resources and support. This assists in empowering teachers to respond to violence disclosure, and reduces resistance to violence prevention work in schools.

• The most successful interventions in schools have been those with an holistic approach which integrated school policies on safety, educational programmes on social skills, and the building of resilience with a focus on changed behaviour.

• Peer education and peer support as prevention and early intervention strategies can be very successful in working with young men and women, even as one-off workshops: young people like hearing other young people’s stories. The major factors for success were the degree to which the peer workers were trained and supported, and had access to briefing and debriefing.

Working with men

Project targeting men funded by Partnerships focused on three main areas: prevention initiatives for men in relationships, early intervention initiatives for young men become who are at risk of becoming violent and tertiary interventions for men who use violence.

Findings from the Partnerships Phase 1 national evaluation:

• Evaluation of all services and programmes, particularly men’s services and perpetrator programmes, must be inherent in all funding agreements and based on sound methodology. Partner’s ongoing experiences of violence should be a key factor in the evaluation.

• Perpetrator programme standards and quality centred measures should be developed.

• The relative strengths of mandatory and voluntary perpetrator programmes need to be assessed.

• In comparison to other violence workers, workers in perpetrator and men’s counselling programmes have relatively lower levels of training, and fewer standards, training courses, and resource materials. Counsellors need to be trained and supported to work across mediation/ counselling/ education programmes.

• There is a need to promote confidentiality to attract men to the services and it is important that the service location does not look like a counselling centre.

• Programmes should provide a set of tools of action in the first session.

• Male specific training for counsellors is needed around issues of language (use of words like ‘advice’ rather than ‘help’), methodology and transference is needed.

• Men generally seek relationship counselling rather than violence counselling.

• Men and women should not always be separated in the counselling process (other than for issues of safety). Where both partners wish the relationship to continue, the aim should be to work within the existing relationship.

• Group programmes have the best results. Individual counselling should be combined with group counselling where possible.

• Perpetrator programmes targeted at Indigenous participants should acknowledge the impacts of dispossession and cultural erosion, and should address substance misuse issues as an essential component of the programme. Indigenous perpetrator programmes should be aimed at complete behaviour change.

• Women need to be involved as counsellors to present a model of respectful relationships between men and women.

• Services working with men should develop and demonstrate their theoretical and philosophical framework, in conjunction with women’s services.

• Programmes should not be solely based within the biological determinism or individual pathology theoretical explanations which can be counter productive. The principle that women’s and children’s safety must be the first priority should be established in all perpetrator programmes.

• There is an urgent need to develop programmes specifically targeted at men from Indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds. Such programmes need to be integrated with broader community development programmes while keeping a focus on domestic violence as a crime.

• More successful perpetrator projects have taken an integrated approach to service delivery at various levels:

- Government: A planned, inter-departmental linkage ensuring a planned approach to male violence linking in all key government interventions and focusing on systemic change.

- Community: A clearly articulated and planned community development approach, involving key community stakeholders and a commitment to the creation of a genuine community ‘legacy’.

- Inter-agency: Integration of criminal justice responses and male support programmes, ensuring that there is accountability for men’s behaviour while also focusing on behaviour change by men. Strong linkages to women’s programmes and appropriate involvement of female partners are also essential.

• More successful perpetrator programmes have a clearly articulated philosophical framework recognising gender power and criminal justice issues and the impact of masculinity and male violence.

Indigenous family violence

Findings from the Partnerships Phase 1 national evaluation:

• Violence in many Indigenous communities, particularly those in rural and remote areas, is more severe, more prevalent across the community and more likely to result in serious injury or death, than violence in non-Indigenous communities.

• The impact of substance misuse is more directly correlated to domestic violence in Indigenous communities than non-Indigenous communities.

• Indigenous women face greater barriers to accessing mainstream services and the civil and criminal justice system, due to cultural inappropriateness of these responses, greater reluctance to separate from the violent partner, and fear that children will be removed if violence is reported.

• Building the capacity of individual community members is an integral and early component of community capacity building and essential for community capacity building to occur.

• In line with the emphasis on a whole-of-community response to family violence, Indigenous women want to involve their men in finding solutions rather than focus on separation and prosecution outcomes.

• Solutions to family violence must originate from, and be run and owned by the Indigenous community.

• Governments and the community sector must take a planned, coordinated and integrated approach to all aspects of service provision including legal and justice, education, health, employment, and family and violence services, in active collaboration with Indigenous communities.

• Service delivery and intervention models, training and educational resources from outside of the community should not be imposed on the community- at minimum they should be adapted and adopted by the community, preferably they should be developed by the community.

• Solutions to family violence must be comprehensive and reflect the multiple issues facing the community including alcohol and substance misuse, loss of cultural identity, the ongoing impact of white settlement, and the need for whole of community healing.

• Sustainable responses require building the capacity of individual community members, in terms of their life and employment related skills (eg project management) and their emotional, cultural and spiritual health.

• Across all effective projects there were common features including:

- A community development approach which provides appropriate support, information and resources and respects that women in communities live with the problem and that they want the violence to cease without necessarily leaving the relationship. In particular, information, support and resources are necessary if Indigenous women are to interact with the criminal and civil justice systems.

- Cultural integration – which involved fitting in with community values, coming from a holistic perspective and recognising the uniqueness of each community.

- Recognition that the capacity of individuals needs to be developed first so that this capacity can then be applied to wider, community development action.

- Collaboration was a main focus to improve responses of service providers to family violence, cooperation, coordination and collaboration.

- An action research methodology that was the underpinning of project progress.

• Any response to family violence in Indigenous communities needs to directly acknowledge the social, cultural and historical context of that community. Many previous programmes in Indigenous communities have been ineffective because they have ignored underlying and exacerbating factors occurring in that community. Successful programmes have not compartmentalised the associated problems of family violence; have used a whole-of-community focus; have adopted a developmental approach to service delivery, and have promoted community input, development and ownership.

Community awareness and education

Findings from the Partnerships Phase 1 national evaluation:

• Education based in the community is a more effective approach than large scale media advertising campaigns, although it was recognised that they could be complementary.

• Community education should be specific to a target community, and developed in conjunction with that community.

• Comprehensive evaluation of such community awareness activities is essential in order to assess their effectiveness; determine whether they achieved their outcomes; and identify the key factors contributing to the achievement of outcomes.

• Grounding prevention activities in theory and research such as health promotion or social marketing, and identifying the factors that change behaviour and stimulate people to take action against domestic violence is essential if community education is to become a reliable and effective method of domestic violence prevention.

• The level of awareness and understanding of the nature of domestic violence, its impacts and effects, is less for many culturally and linguistically diverse communities than for the general community.

• Community ownership, quality resource materials and training and support for staff are critical factors in successfully implementing community awareness activities.

• Sustainability, legacy and a focus on changing behaviours - not just providing information or informing attitudes - should be key considerations for future initiatives of this type.

• Planning for community awareness raising or changing behaviours must reflect the degree to which awareness raising activities will heighten anxiety (in perpetrators, victims, children, families and friends) and create demand for information, resources and support services. If these services are not available for the location or target group and cannot be provided in the campaign budget, it may be more appropriate to limit awareness activities to providing information or informing attitudes.

Information and infrastructure

Partnerships has set the foundation for both the identification of new approaches to complex issues and the benefits of working in partnership across jurisdictions and sectors. Key directions which are now required include breaking down the silos between various service systems such as police, education, courts, welfare and health, to find more effective ways of dealing with the complexity of the issue.

Findings from the Partnerships Phase 1 national evaluation:

• Domestic and family violence present complex issues requiring a multi-pronged and multi-level response. This does not mean a complicated response but rather one which is integrated at every level – policy, programme development, management and service delivery.

• The quality of information (data, research and information resources) and infrastructure (capacity of the community, service systems and jurisdictions to respond appropriately) underpins the effectiveness of responses to domestic violence from the national policy level through to the local delivery of services.

• Mainstream service providers, key professionals, community leaders and family and friends have enormous untapped capacity to help children, young people and women, and to assist perpetrators to change their behaviour. Information, training, support and resources should be targeted to these groups as appropriate.

• In planning and funding future government programmes, it is essential to develop strategies early to ensure the maintenance of momentum and the sustainability of organisational developments beyond the funding period.

• A uniform national data set remains a challenge for policy and decision-makers across portfolios and jurisdictions. Currently it is impossible to compare State and Territory police and court statistics on incidence, prevalence and severity of assaults; police investigations; intervention orders; breaches of intervention orders; or prosecution rates, due to the fact that these are identified and recorded differently across jurisdictions. The inherent challenges in such a task require significant investment, cooperation and coordination across portfolios and levels of government.

• There is now sufficient research and practice evidence to require funded services to articulate the basis for their work and their operational framework as a factor to be considered in funding decisions.

• The Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, currently funded under Phase 2 of Partnerships has an important national role in collating and disseminating information, research, resources and training materials.

• Comprehensive, consistent and locally appropriate responses to domestic violence have most successfully been achieved through integrated and coordinated models of service delivery across service system sectors and jurisdictions.

• A challenge that exists for both coordinated models and domestic violence services more generally is how to increase their inclusiveness to ensure that a wider segment of the community (particularly men, and people of Indigenous and non-English speaking backgrounds) is able to access help for domestic violence.

• Rural and remote areas face specific challenges in terms of delivering information and providing infrastructure to assist women to access justice, protection and support. Indigenous and non-English speaking background communities are particularly vulnerable. Partnerships has identified effective strategies to improve access including:

- Enhancing police evidence-gathering techniques and protocols so that quality evidence is more consistently gathered, and prosecutions may proceed without forcing the victim to testify.

- Revising court-listing procedures so that there is consistent treatment and better information where multiple issues affect one family across criminal law matters, protection order applications and family law matters.

- Improving use of information technology such as widening access to telephone lines, allowing applications for protection/ intervention orders to be lodged over the internet, or using video and teleconference appearances in legal matters.

- Developing strategies to increase the accessibility of mainstream legal and other services to rural communities, particularly for people from Indigenous and non-English speaking background communities. Such strategies include integrating government, community and private legal services with existing community organisations and supports; developing and implementing whole of community responses, projects and activities in consultation with the community or region, and cultural awareness training.

- Forging links between regional Family Court services, children’s services and court support and liaison services.

- Developing cross-border protocols and procedures.

- Improved confidentiality protocols for support, counselling and accommodation services in small communities.

- The provision of a range of accommodation options from safe houses to medium to long term accommodation.