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Safe at Home – Evidence Review

This Evidence Review was conducted by the Gendered Violence Research Network at the University of New South Wales as part of 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 Evidence Review includes 34 studies, considered in the context of key Safe at Home pillars. Key components for effective Safe at Home responses in the literature are identified. The findings from this Review were used to inform the overall SHEBA Project.

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

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Citation:
Breckenridge, J., Dubler, N., Lyons, G., & Suchting, M. (2024). Safe at Home Victoria – Evidence Review. Gendered Violence Research Network, University of New South Wales.

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

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.

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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

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.

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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

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.

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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

KODY Practitioner Workshop: A KODY Model for Change – Report

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.

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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.

Substance Use Coercion: The Intersection of Domestic and Family Violence and Alcohol and Other Drugs. Policy Briefing Paper (KODY)

In the context of domestic and family violence (DFV), substance use often forms part of the tactics of
violence and abuse. Alcohol and (or) Other Drugs (AOD) when leveraged as a tactic of violence and
abuse is referred to as substance use coercion, though some stakeholders prefer the term substance
use exploitation. While acknowledging this nuance, this briefing paper will generally use the term
‘substance use coercion’ for ease of reading, and reflecting the dominant language over a 2 year
period in the Policy Stakeholder Group.

This paper discusses the current Australian policy context and the pathways forward for the inclusion
of substance use coercion in DFV and AOD policy, including the impact on children and young
people, and the need for an aligned national and state policy to reduce silos between sectors.

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Year: 2023

Citation:
KODY Research Team. (2023). Substance Use Coercion: The Intersection of
Domestic and Family Violence and Alcohol and Other Drugs.
Policy Briefing Paper, November 2023.
University of Melbourne.

KODY Policy Stakeholder Group: Leverage Points for policy development across sectors: a systems approach. Report of Workshop 1, November 2022 (2023)

This report presents the findings from the first KODY Policy Stakeholder Group workshop held at the University of Melbourne on the 29th of November 2022. The KODY Policy Stakeholder Group (PSG) brings together professionals from across Australia who are interested in improving the policy environment and services for families experiencing issues with substance use and family violence. Stakeholders came from a range of sectors including alcohol and other drugs (AOD), domestic and family violence (DFV), child protection, child and family welfare and government policymakers. This report contains a summary of key topic areas discussed in the PSG Workshop:

  • A synthesis of current knowledge on the relationship between AOD and DFV. 
  • A snapshot of the systems targeted by the PSG.
  • A summary of presentations adhering to the knowledge diamond heuristic. 
  • An action plan with key priorities identified to guide the PSG’s future work.

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Researchers: Callaly, V. Kertesz, M., & Humphreys, C.

Year: 2023

Citation: Callaly, V., Kertesz, M., & Humphreys, C. (2023). KODY Policy Stakeholder Group: Leverage Points for policy development across sectors: a systems approach. Report of Workshop 1, November 2022.

KODY Practitioner Workshop: Practitioner-led Knowledge Building – Report (2023)

On March 16th, 2023, the KODY Program’s first Practitioner Workshop was held in Richmond, 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 three-hour workshop. The first half of the workshop consisted of a case study presented by KODY Caring Dads (CD) facilitators to illustrate the work, and an overview of program referral data, client numbers and profile, presented by the research team. Interested professionals from outside the program attended this half of the workshop. The second part involved a conversation mapping exercise.

There was considerable discussion about the development of various aspects of the KODY program since it started in 2021. A wider conception of KODY than a groupwork program for men emerged – towards a program not only working with all members of the family, but also actively engaging with the services surrounding the family and working collaboratively and holistically with them. This paper presents the Case Study, and a summary of participants’ thoughts, fears, and hopes about the KODY program.

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Researchers: Guillou, M., Nguyen, H. T. D., Kertesz, M., & Humphreys, C.

Year: 2023

Citation: Guillou, M., Nguyen, H. T. D., Kertesz, M., & Humphreys, C. (2023). KODY Practitioner Workshop: Practitioner-led Knowledge Building. Report of Practitioner Workshop, 16 March 2023. University of Melbourne.

Programme responses for men who perpetrate intimate partner violence in the context of alcohol or other drugs: a scoping review (2023)

This scoping paper explored the contextual factors influencing the development and implementation of programmes addressing men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence in the context of substance use. Twenty-one peer reviewed studies reporting on ten programs were included for analysis. This scoping review found a limited evidence base, indicating systemic barriers hindering services’ capacity to expand this field of work. Additional support is required from the wider service systems to intervene in men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence and use of substances.

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Researchers: Callaly, V., Kertesz, M., Davidson, J., Humphreys, C., & Laslett, A.-M.

Year: 2023

Citation: Callaly, V., Kertesz, M., Davidson, J., Humphreys, C., & Laslett, A.-M. (2023). Programme responses for men who perpetrate intimate partner violence in the context of alcohol or other drugs: a scoping review. Advances in Dual Diagnosis. doi:10.1108/add-07-2022-0021

Domestic Violence Linked to Alcohol Use is A National Emergency – Pursuit Article

”Alcohol and other drug use increases the severity of violence towards victim survivors, but the drug and alcohol sector and the domestic violence sector remain stubbornly siloed.”

In this Pursuit article, Professor Cathy Humphreys drew attention to data on increased numbers of domestic-related assaults and alcohol-related assaults recorded in Alice Springs between 2021-2022, to highlight the intersection between domestic and family violence and alcohol and other drugs in Australia. In particular, Professor Humphreys discussed experiences of violence where alcohol and other drug use is part of the tactics of coercive control used by perpetrators, and emphasised the role of wholistic service responses in this area.

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Author: Professor Cathy Humphreys

Date: 30 January 2023

Citation:
Humphreys, C. (2023, 30 January). Domestic Violence Linked to Alcohol Use is A National Emergency. Pursuit. https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/domestic-violence-linked-to-alcohol-use-is-a-national-emergency