After 13 months, hearing from 220 victims and producing a 1900-page report, the Royal Commission into Family Violence has released its recommendations. Here are the main proposals. Premier Daniel Andrews has said he will implement all recommendations.
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1. One-stop safety hubs: Victoria needs to establish highly visible "support and safety" hubs so that victims can get information and find services in their local area.
2. Make new laws: Privacy should not trump victim safety, and laws will be changed to allow information sharing. A centralised service will share information about perpetrators.
3. He should leave: A substantial expansion of the "safe at home" approach, under which women and children remain in the family home, where possible.
4. A housing "blitz": Women and children who have left their homes and are stuck in crisis or short-term housing should be immediately rehoused with the support of expanded individual funding. A housing taskforce should be set up to end blockages in the system.
5. Focus on abuser: Programs that deal with perpetrators are entirely insufficient, and increased monitoring and insight is needed.
6. Create more family violence courts: An expansion of specialist courts that can deal with the complexities facing victims.
7. Protect children: Children should have more access to counselling and other support, and be automatically included on intervention orders or have their own order.
8. Hospital assistance: Public hospitals should be resourced to have a whole-of-hospital response to family violence.
9. Appoint a watchdog: An independent Family Violence Agency to hold governments to account.
10. More money: The commission was given a budget of $36 million to run its investigation and has only spent $13.5 million. It recommends that the remaining $22.5 million be used to kick-start the response towards the current crisiss. But this is only the start. The state government allocated $80.6 million to family violence in 2014-15. But these recommendations will cost far, far more than this amount and will need to take priority in the state and federal budgets, the commission finds. It does not set a dollar figure.
11. Frontline policing: More use of investigative and mobile technology for police, including the trial of body-worn cameras.
12. Better understanding: Family violence training for all key workers, including those in hospitals and schools, and an expansion of respectful-relationships education in schools.
13. Aboriginal communities: Family violence rates are higher among Indigenous Australians but women and children face cultural barriers when trying to get support.
14. Victims come from all walks of life: Senior, multicultural and disability specialist family violence services to provide training for family violence service providers.
15. Local councils have a job too: Required to report on the measures that they take to reduce family violence and respond to victims.
– THE AGE
