The Centre for Family Violence Prevention is at the forefront of working with survivors to develop Trauma and Violence Informed Care
Co-design lived experience project
The project (2023-26) aims to recruit and work with a group of women who have experienced domestic, family, and/or sexual violence who are also previous consumers of The Royal Women’s Hospital. The group will work to co-design a pilot program at the Women’s that supports the hospital in implementing its model of trauma-and-violence informed care. This has been funded by Equity Trustees.
Trauma and Violence Informed Staff Wellbeing Program
This project (2025-26) will develop a trauma and violence-informed wellbeing program for healthcare workers at the Royal Women’s Hospital, and precinct partners across the Local Health Services Network. The aim is to foster a workplace wellbeing program for healthcare workers, many of whom have directly experienced trauma in their personal and professional lives and who care for patients who have experienced trauma. The project aligns with Safer Care Victoria’s Workforce Wellbeing and Family Violence program and strengthens the Women’s occupational health and safety approach. This project will be conducted in two parts – Program Implementation Phase and Evaluation Phase. The project will include the development of a Workforce trauma and violence-informed support and a wellbeing toolkit and trauma and violence-informed wellbeing sessions for staff.
The Centre for Family Violence Prevention is influencing how screening and first line response is being undertaken across Victoria.
Our key projects in this area are TRANSFORM and SUSTAIN. These projects were aimed at developing sustainable ways to identify and respond to women experiencing domestic violence during antenatal care to further inform the roll out of screening in antenatal care at the Women’s hospital. We have developed a Health System Implementation model as a framework for screening and response to domestic violence in antenatal care. The REAL Model outlines what factors encourages practitioners to sustain DV screening and response.
The TRANSFORM project aimed to develop and test a trauma and violence-informed model of care to address domestic violence in various health settings including antenatal care, general practice and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health. A model to effectively respond should operate on all levels of a health care setting, including environment, management and leadership, staff support, referral pathways, information sharing, protocols and policies, and community linkages.
We receive Government funding to embed and evaluate a specific digital package that enables family violence screening to be completed with women in English and a range of non-English languages (using digital screening platform iCOPE). This enables streamlined antenatal screening for family violence in multiple languages that is MARAM aligned, acceptable to women, practical for clinicians, and sustainable.
The SUSTAIN Project has developed sustainable ways to identify and respond to women experiencing DFSV during antenatal care. SUSTAIN informed the roll out of screening in antenatal care at the Women’s hospital.
We are influencing policy and practice in Victorian family, domestic and sexual violence reforms.
Since 2014, the Victorian Government has funded The Royal Women's Hospital and Bendigo Health to lead the development and implementation of a framework to embed a whole-of-hospital approach to identify and respond to family, domestic and sexual violence. The Strengthening Hospital Responses to Family Violence program is now operationalised in 88 Victorian hospitals and health services, and successfully delivers on recommendation 95 of the Royal Commission into Family Violence. Further information about the Strengthening hospital responses to family violence program.
The Centre for Family Violence Prevention was successful in a Collier Charitable Fund $500,000 grant. The project which ran between 2019-2022 assessed the impact of the Strengthening Hospital Responses to Family Violence program across eighteen metropolitan, regional and rural Victorian hospitals. The final Report, Executive Summary and brief Report Summary can be found here.
The System Audit Family, domestic and sexual violence Evaluation Tool (SAFE) Project Expanded
We have been funded by the Victorian government to continue the SAFE Project at 20 new sites between 2023-25.
In building capacity and capability within Victorian hospitals and health services to strengthen responses to family, domestic and sexual violence, there is a need for sustainable and evaluated Family Violence Clinical Champions (who support staff responding to DFSV and Family Violence Contact Officers (who support staff who have experienced family violence) programs. The Women’s, with expert input from the University of Melbourne, received Government funding for an eighteen-month project (2023-2025) to implement and evaluate, sustainable Family Violence Clinical Champion and Contact Officers programs at six public hospitals/health services. Through this process a Clinical Champion and Contact Officer program framework/model was developed.