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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-10-14 Daily Xml
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FAMILY SAFETY FRAMEWORK

The Hon. S.G. WADE (14:38): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for the Status of Women questions relating to the implementation of the Family Safety Network.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: The Women's Safety Strategy was introduced in 2005. Under this strategy, the Office for Women manages the Family Safety Network. The Family Safety Network, I understand, seeks to ensure that agencies such as police, families and communities, and non-government DV organisations share information about support to high-risk families and take responsibility to support these families to navigate the service system.

I understand that, five years since the launch of the Women's Safety Strategy, the Family Safety Network is operating in less than half of the state's police local service areas. These are Holden Hill, South Coast (Noarlunga), Port Augusta, Port Pirie, Northern Metro (Elizabeth) and Western Metro (Port Adelaide).

One of the common myths which the White Ribbon Foundation seeks to address is that certain groups, whether cultural or socioeconomic, are responsible for the majority of violence against women. Domestic violence occurs across all sections of society. My questions are:

1. How does the government justify the focus of the Family Safety Network on areas with relatively low socioeconomic indicators?

2. Are the government's allocations under this program based on assessed risk?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for State/Local Government Relations, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Government Enterprises, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:39): The Family Safety Framework seeks to ensure that services to families who are most at risk of violence are dealt with in a much more structured and systematic way, through providing a forum that enables agencies to come together to share information about those high-risk families, and to then take the responsibility for supporting those families to navigate through what can often be seen as a complex set of systems.

The Family Safety Framework has indeed been a great success and as, the honourable member outlined, it is now being rolled out to six regions throughout South Australia, and we are currently considering further rollout as well. In relation to the choosing of their sites, I have been advised that a number of issues are taken into consideration. The demand is only one, so that obviously there is a need.

There are other issues around the infrastructure in place in those regions that would lend themselves to the suitability of the Family Safety Framework, particularly where there are specific designated police resources for domestic violence. What we have sought to do, wherever possible, is to value add, so that where there are designated resources available we have sought to build on those and to enhance them through the Family Safety Framework arrangements.

These have all been considerations. We have also tried to value add in terms of the practices of various regions. Some regions had in place a network of information sharing that made them quite suitable for applying a Family Safety Framework, so clearly we have assessed a wide range of different attributes and circumstances and have sought to choose the most suitable places according to, as I said, a number of different assessors.

There has been an evaluation of the Family Safety Framework and that has demonstrated how effective this particular approach is. I have visited a number of these already, and the feedback from those agencies and individuals from different agencies participating in the Family Safety Framework speaks very highly of the benefits of this particular approach.

I have particularly spoken to a number of police officers involved, and on all occasions those people I have spoken to have indicated their high regard for the Family Safety Framework and the benefits they believe it offers. So as I said, we continue to look for opportunities to roll out the Family Safety Framework further here in South Australia.

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