Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin has handed down the report card on the progress of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children.
The Commission has centred the voices of lived experience in all work, establishing high standards for deep listening and co-design and shows the strength in meaningful consultations. The Yearly Report also acknowledges the deep expertise of the frontline, specialist domestic and family violence workforce alongside the challenges they experience in relation to resourcing and burnout, and points to the need for a national strategy to build the capability of the workforce.
As the report notes, existing specialist domestic and family violence services need an immediate uplift of funding to meet demand for services. Despite the horrific number of women and children murdered this year, despite national outrage and rallies across the country, despite the declaration of a national emergency, calls for increased frontline funding haven’t yet been heard, and services are forced to turn people away.
Until all frontline, specialist domestic and family violence services are adequately and sustainably funded, we will not see meaningful progress against the national plan or a future without gendered-based violence. Given that the States and Territories are required to do much of the heavy lifting in implementing the National Plan improved structures to ensure flow-through of resources is required.
As a member of the National Alliance of DV Specialist Services representing over 300 specialist domestic and family violence service providers across the country, CWSW continues to call on the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to fund the solutions to ending gender-based violence.
Read the National Alliance of DV Specialist Services’ full statement here.
