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Author: Rhys Lawry

Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers, and Access (The SHEBA Project) – Knowledge Translation Report and Practice Guidance

Posted by: Rhys Lawry Posted on: February 17, 2025 ,

The Knowledge Translation Report and Practice Guidance provides an overview of key findings and considerations for practice from the Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers and Access (SHEBA) Project. This project explored Personal Safety Initiatives (PSIs) and Safe at Home responses to family violence more broadly in Victoria, Australia.

Across phases of access, implementation and longer term use of PSIs and Safe at Home responses, practice considerations that can be implemented in different organisational and practice contexts within the current Victorian service system are provided.

Full details of the SHEBA Project can be found in the Research Report.

Read the Document

Citation:
Isobe, J., Diemer, K., & Humphreys, C. (2024). Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers, and Access (The SHEBA Project) – Knowledge Translation Report and Practice Guidance. The University of Melbourne. DOI: 10.26188/27950151

Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers, and Access (The SHEBA Project) – Policy Brief

Posted by: Rhys Lawry Posted on: February 17, 2025 ,

This Policy Brief provides an overview of the 12 key components for effective Safe at Home responses identified in the Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers and Access (SHEBA) Project. This project explored Personal Safety Initiatives (PSIs) and Safe at Home responses to family violence more broadly in Victoria, Australia.

The 12 key components identified were:

  1. Support towards affordable, secure and stable housing as part of homelessness prevention.
  2. A range of accessible specialist family violence services offered over time as part of the response.
  3. Local partnerships and collaboration providing strong service coordination to address safety risks, stability needs and sustained wellbeing.
  4. Program responsiveness through streamlined processes and flexibility to adapt service provision.
  5. Receive specific funding for components of the response, indexed to economic and contextual changes over time.
  6. Clients have a voice in decision-making to ensure that responses are accessible to, informed by, and empowering of diverse victim/survivors.
  7. Include children and young people as victim/survivors in their own right, with components to support their safety, wellbeing and recovery.
  8. Focus on reducing risk and increasing victim/survivor safety through a suite of integrated responses.
  9. Attend to safety concerns arising from multiple, changing forms of violence used within different family contexts.
  10. Work alongside perpetrator interventions with people using violence as part of a holistic response connecting safety and accountability.
  11. Provide cultural safety and cultural authority through intersectional service provision supporting diverse needs.
  12. Informed and improved by iterative data and evidence generation, capacity building and collaborative working.

Across the 12 key components, 62 recommendations were made to strengthen and support an enhanced future state of Safe at Home responses in Victoria.

Full details of the SHEBA Project can be found in the Research Report.

Read the Document

Citation:
Isobe, J., Diemer, K., & Humphreys, C. (2024). Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers, and Access (The SHEBA Project) Policy Brief, November 2024. The University of Melbourne: Melbourne, Australia. DOI: 10.26188/27957123

Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers, and Access (The SHEBA Project) – Research Report

Posted by: Rhys Lawry Posted on: February 17, 2025 ,

The Research Report details the background, methodology, findings and recommendations from the Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers and Access (SHEBA) Project.

This project explored Personal Safety Initiatives (PSIs) and Safe at Home responses to family violence more broadly in Victoria, Australia. The project aimed to hear from victim/survivors of family violence who had accessed PSIs, and from sector practitioners delivering PSIs and Safe at Home responses to understand:

  1. Key components of an effective Safe at Home response.
  2. Facilitators and barriers to implementing an effective Safe at Home response.
  3. Evidence of how Safe at Home responses can be adapted to ensure the safety of victim/survivors to accommodate: a) emergency or disaster settings; and b) diverse population groups.
  4. Gaps in the current Safe at Home service provision for victim/survivors in Victoria.

Findings highlighted key strengths and facilitators, limitations and barriers for effective implementation of PSIs and Safe at Home responses in Victoria across phases of access, implementation and longer-term use. The project highlighted practice considerations across these phases that can be implemented in different organisational and practice contexts within the current Victorian service system. Combining findings with those from evidence in the literature, the SHEBA Project highlighted 12 key components for effective Safe at Home responses and their delivery, contributing to international literature concerning Safe at Home responses. The project made 62 recommendations to strengthen these 12 key components and support an enhanced future state of Safe at Home responses in Victoria.

The Executive Summary extracted from the report can be accessed here.

Read the Research Report

Citation:
Isobe, J., Diemer, K., Humphreys, C., & De Silva, H. (2024). Safe at Home: Experiences, Barriers, and Access (The SHEBA Project): Research Report. The University of Melbourne. DOI: 10.26188/27889083

Collaboration to Harness Research Involving Safe & Together: Inquiry and Evidence (CHRISTIE)

Posted by: Rhys Lawry Posted on: September 20, 2024

CHRISTIE is an action research project which will extend the evidence base about effective interagency work for children, young people and families impacted by domestic violence so that they experience service systems that work as collaborative partners to keep children safe and together with non-offending parents. The project draws on practitioner expertise elicited through a series of interagency Communities of Practice (CoPs) and senior management Project Action Group meetings, including local collaboration and information-sharing.

CHRISTIE is the latest collaborative research between the Safe & Together Institute and the University of Melbourne, building on the foundations of previous projects based on the Safe & Together™ Model, including PATRICIA, Invisible Practices, STACY, STACY for Children, ESTIE and ALFies.

Researchers:

  • Dr Margaret Kertesz (University of Melbourne)
  • Professor Cathy Humphreys(University of Melbourne)
  • Cherie Toivonen (CLT Byron Consulting)
  • Dr Jamilla Rosdahl (University of Melbourne)
  • Marlene Lauw (ML Consultancy Pty Ltd)

Funding:

Funded by the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence National Partnership Agreement administered by NSW Ministry of Health and DVNSW

Partners:

Project Dates: February 2024 – December 2025

Contact: Dr Margaret Kertesz

KODY Practitioner Workshop: A KODY Model for Change – Report

Posted by: Rhys Lawry Posted on: September 20, 2024 ,

On March 25th, 2025, the second KODY Practitioner Workshop was held in Brunswick, Melbourne. Practitioners and program managers from Kids First and Odyssey House Victoria (OHV), along with researchers from the University of Melbourne and Southern Cross University, attended the five-hour workshop. In the KODY project’s third and final year, the workshop provided an opportunity for practitioners, program managers, and researchers to reflect on the novel and ambitious KODY program. Where did the program succeed? Where and how did it fall short on delivering an all-of-family service? Where, and more importantly, how, can it be improved? The interdisciplinary professionals gathered at the workshop, whose collective insights encompassed acquired experience, current practice, and research evidence, attempted to answer these reflective and important questions.

The workshop ran in three parts. In the first part, ‘Stories from Research and Evaluation’, researchers presented an overview of KODY evaluation data gathered over the 3-year period, with practitioners providing feedback and reflections on the implications for research and practice. In the second part, ‘Stories from Practice’, practitioners were invited to write a story about a client or family they had worked with on the KODY program (or a client or family who would have benefited from the KODY program). In the third part, ‘Creating the KODY Model for Change’, practitioners examined the existing elements and goals of the KODY program, shared ideas about how to improve the KODY model, and reflected on the implications for future service delivery.

Read the Report

Year: 2024

Citation:
Kertesz, M., Nguyen, H. T. D., Guillou, M., Tsantefski, M., & Humphreys, C. (2024). KODY Practitioner Workshop: A KODY Model for Change. Report of Practitioner Workshop with Kids First and Odyssey House Victoria, 25 March 2024. University of Melbourne and Southern Cross University.