Resources

Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety

Council of Australian Governments

Child and Youth Protection Services (ACT)

Domestic and family violence

Domestic Violence Crisis Service

Employee assistance program

Education Centre Against Violence NSW Health

General practitioner (doctor)

Intimate partner sexual violence

LGBTIQ+ is an umbrella term respectfully used to refer to the diversity of individuals that are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and/or queer. It is also intended to capture diverse sexualities and gender identities, including (but not limited to) people who are agender, non-binary, gender fluid, asexual and pansexual, as well as individuals who prefer to use specialised personal terms to describe their own sex, gender or sexuality.

Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Victoria

Men’s Behaviour Change Program

Peak body for specialist women’s domestic and family violence services and provides a range of resources and support and training around technology and safety in the context of domestic and sexual abuse

World Health Organization

The ability to make decisions for oneself

Coercive control is a strategy some perpetrators use to dominate their intimate partners and maintain their privileges. It usually includes some combination of isolation, degradation, micromanagement, manipulation, stalking, physical abuse, sexual coercion, threats and punishment. Not all of these tactics are always present. For instance, an abuser may use no physical violence and control his partner through other means.

Coercive controllers use particular techniques – isolation, gaslighting, surveillance – to strip the victim of their liberty, and take away their sense of self…It is a strategic campaign of abuse held together by fear.

Sometimes known as ‘intimate terrorism’

Behaviour that controls or dominates a family member and causes them to fear for their own or another person’s safety or wellbeing.

Violent or threatening behaviour, or any other form of behaviour that coerces or controls a family member or causes that family member to be fearful.

Family ecology is a way of describing all the interactions within and between the different people and environments of a family, and recognising that child development is affected by the environments in which it occurs.

Trying to make someone feel they are crazy ‘often’ or ‘all the time’

The process of sensitively asking questions when you suspect a woman is experiencing domestic violence.

The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination combine, or intersect.

A term that is  used to describe how multiple forms of exclusion can impact on a person’s individual experience of marginalisation’.

Assessment of the range of issues that could impact on a victims ability to secure and maintain safety. Would usually include at least an assessment of health, legal, housing and finance needs.

Outing is the act of disclosing a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person's sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent.

The ability of family violence systems agencies to work together to keep the perpetrator within view, so as to assess, monitor and manage dynamic risk…perpetrator accountability is seen less as a set of singular actions or consequences …and more as an ongoing response that flips the systems focus from solely protecting victims from risk towards also responding to and containing risk at its source.

This means ensuring that in every interaction the system has with either a victim or a perpetrator, full responsibility for the violence is held with the perpetrator.

The person who poses the most serious and ongoing threat to safety and wellbeing

The process of identifying if a person is at risk of family violence and then determining the seriousness, including the likelihood that they will be affected by violence or, if violence is already occurring, that it will escalate. Determining seriousness of risk is undertaken through structured professional judgement with an intersectional lens, and by using relevant risk assessment approaches.

The purpose of risk assessment is to determine the risk and safety for the adult victim and children, taking into consideration the range of victim and perpetrator risk factors that affect the likelihood and severity of future violence.  

A broad approach that includes ensuring the service system is able to identify and support victims early in the life of the violence and that workers have access to tools to help assess the level of risk of violence and assist victims to respond to and manage that risk.

A tool which (in the main) assesses for an individual’s risk of victimisation, harm and/or lethality and/or escalation of violence. Some tools assess the likelihood of perpetration or reoffending or escalation.

A broad term used to encompass responses to family and domestic violence that aim to promote victim safety and perpetrator accountability. Risk management or responding to risk is understood as a fundamental and requisite part of working with victims and their children regardless of their level of risk.

Screening is the systematic routine of asking every woman who uses the service the same key questions about domestic and family violence. The goal is to identify those at risk (early in the life of the violence) who need further assessment and support to reduce the likelihood of further and/or escalating violence. Screening, that is asking all clients a few key questions about violence and safety, takes the responsibility for deciding who might need to be asked about domestic violence off the practitioner.

First people have the right to self-determination which is an ongoing process of choice to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are able to meet their social, cultural and economic needs.

Two levels of the training program provided to frontline ACT Government employees on identifying and responding to domestic and family violence

Any tool or object used by a perpetrator to threaten or intimidate, harm or kill a victim or victims, or to destroy property.