New Funding Supports Local Diverse Communities Experiencing Family Violence

Two services in the NMR have been successful in receiving funding through the Working Together: Strengthening Family Violence Support with Multicultural Communities grant program: the Centre for Multicultural Youth in partnership with Anglicare, and Whittlesea Community Connections.

Whittlesea Community Connections (WCC) has received funding through the program to deliver a 12-month Multi-Service Coordinated Family Violence Response Project.

This project aims to support multicultural communities to reduce the barriers they experience in accessing the family violence and sexual assault service system. Furthermore, the project seeks to capacity build family violence and sexual assault practitioners in responding to the complex needs of multicultural community members and to improve overall service provision to be culturally safe and responsive.

To achieve this, an Intersectional Coordinated Family Violence Response Model will be implemented, were there will be Bilingual FV System Connectors (BFVSC) based at key mainstream service locations across the City of Whittlesea. The BFVSC’s will play a key role in this model, acting as a conduit so that multicultural community members can access and gain support from the family violence and sexual assault service system.

Key project partners include Northern Centre Against Sexual Assault, Berry Street, DPV Health, and Kids First. The overarching goal is to better support multicultural women and children within the City of Whittlesea who are experiencing family violence in accessing family violence and sexual assault services.

(Source: Whittlesea Community Connections email, 4.10.22)