Victoria's new 10-year plan to end family violence has at its core an understanding that family violence is preventable. The plan - Ending Family Violence: Victoria’s Plan for Change - highlights five key initiatives that will prevent family violence from happening in the first place.
- To strengthen the focus on the prevention of family violence across the system, a new Prevention Agency is being established. This agency will coordinate activities and monitor outcomes, commission research to develop improved approaches, fund and support Local Prevention Alliances and work with others to change the attitudes and behaviours that lead to family violence.
- A Primary Prevention Strategy - due to be released in 2017 – will focus on increasing understanding and knowledge about prevention and driving a change in attitudes and behaviours across the Victorian population. It will include actions in schools, workplaces and sporting clubs; and will work with Victorians at every stage of life.
- Victoria's first Gender Equality Strategy will aim to address the social, economic and political structures and systems that give rise to gender inequality. Challenging discrimination and gender inequality (the key driver of violence against women) will, in turn, help to prevent family violence.
- To ensure the next generation is equipped to build relationships based on equality and respect, Respectful Relationships education will be rolled out to all schools, beginning in 2017. This work will see equality and respectful relationships embedded across the culture of our schools to improve student and staff knowledge, attitudes and confidence in discussing these issues.
- The Victorian Workplace Equality and Respect Project will support the delivery of programs regarding the prevention of violence against women, gender equality and respect in workplace settings across Victoria.
Together, these initiatives will help to change the social structures, norms and practices that influence the development of attitudes and behaviours that lead to family violence, creating lasting change and a Victoria where everybody, regardless of their gender, is equal and treated with respect.
For more information see www.vic.gov.au/familyviolence.
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