Submission to the Royal Commission into Family Violence (2015)

Violence against women occurs in all Victorian communities and across all cultures. There are clear differences in the way that violence is enacted across cultures and social contexts, but no one immigrant/refugee community or culture is any more violent than another.

However, due to structural inequalities, immigrant and refugee women are more vulnerable to violence, and have a lower level of access to family violence services. They face a range of barriers when they act on family violence, and as a result are under-represented in early intervention programs and over-represented as crisis service users.

Download the submission in PDF format

The MCWH Submission to the Royal Commission into Family Violence scopes the range of issues impacting on immigrant and refugee women, addressing policy, prevention and early intervention programs, and access to appropriate family violence response services. The submission charts the pathways to change to improve immigrant and refugee women’s safety and wellbeing, and decrease their vulnerability to family violence.

MCWH would like to see stronger links between policy, resource allocation and program implementation taking a comprehensive intersectional approach so that ‘diversity statements’ in policy follow through to action. We advocate for a broader definition of violence, and a greater focus and investment in primary prevention and early intervention programs so that women are enabled to link with appropriate services at an earlier point in their experience of family violence.

MCWH would like to see a greater valuing of bilingual and bilingual workers in the family violence system through workforce diversification strategies across all types of programs, fostering in particular, the leadership of immigrant and refugee women. Importantly, the family violence response sector needs a significant boost, to ensure that women who do access the system are assisted in the most effective and meaningful ways. Cultural and structural change is required, as are fundamental improvements to on-the-ground practice.