Code of Practice

The Centre for Women’s Safety and Wellbeing has developed the Code of Practice for Specialist Family and Domestic Violence Services for Victim Survivors in Western Australia.

Launched in 2025 the Code of Practice for Specialist Family and Domestic Violence Services for Victim-Survivors provides ten guiding principles that exemplify best practice in service design and delivery for specialist family and domestic violence services working with adult and child victim-survivors. Each principle is accompanied by an explanatory discussion and a set of standards and indicators that specialist family and domestic violence services can use to inform their continuous quality improvement.

Specialist family and domestic violence services can use the Code of Practice and the Audit Tool for continuous quality improvement by evidencing their progress against the standards and indicators, identifying gaps and trends, and making action plans for organisational change and improvement. Additionally, services may wish to use the Code of Practice for a range of other activities such as:

Strategic planning and visioning
Developing policies and procedures
Organisational change management processes
Staff induction, supervision, and reflective practice
Systemic advocacy for the rights of victim-survivors and role of specialist services.
Internal and external education, training, and mentoring.

CWSW has developed an Implementation Plan that supports alignment at every level:

Organisational leadership – driving accountability and resourcing.
Operational systems – integrating the Code into workforce and quality processes.
Practice delivery – supporting frontline practitioners to apply the Code.