Women's specialist domestic and family violence services: Their responses and practices with and for Aboriginal women: Final report

Abstract

Despite the increasingly high profile of domestic and family violence (DFV) in Australian society, surprisingly little is known in the public domain about the ways women’s specialist services provide help to the victims/survivors. When it comes to Aboriginal women, high rates of violence have been well documented and publicised; however, very little has been documented or analysed in relation to how specialist DFV services work with and for Aboriginal women as clients/survivors, workers, board, and community members.<br/ >Women’s specialist domestic and family violence services: Their responses and practices with and for Aboriginal women is a project that concentrated on how workers and services listen to Aboriginal women—what they see and hear, what they have learnt, and how they apply this in practice.<br/ ><br/ >Produced by working closely and collaboratively for more than a year with three specialist DFV services — Alice Springs Women’s Shelter, ACT Domestic Violence Crisis Service, and Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women’s Council Domestic and Family Violence Service (NPY Women’s Council) — the research undertaken for this report focused on learning from these services and from the Aboriginal women who have contact with these services, as clients and community members, or who work with or within the services.<br/ ><br/ >The research also focused on finding out from Aboriginal women what they value from crisis contact, and when and how they thought services could ask them their views and experiences. The insights are crucial for women’s specialist services in maintaining open and continual learning from Aboriginal women as clients.<br/ ><br/ >Local Aboriginal women were an integral part of the research project, but the research findings do not represent the views of all Aboriginal women.<br/ ><br/ >Among the recommendations from the research are a number of key messages for policy and practice.