There is little known about family violence in culturally and linguistically diverse communities – even the Victorian Royal Commission identified there is ‘no reliable data’ to provide a picture of the problem.
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Despite this, a program at Gateway Health is delving into the issue and working on prevention.
Tricia Hazeleger will be running the ‘Keeping Families Safe’ until June.
Since January, she has been working with the Albury Wodonga Ethnic Communities Council’s Bhakti Dhamala to provide translated information to the Border’s Bhutanese and Congolese refugees.
“It’s good to get information out word-of-mouth, so we need to get better at getting staff from our family violence team out to talk regularly to the community and we’re also looking at having an annual meeting with community leaders,” Ms Hazeleger said.
“We’re also educating our staff in how to use interpreters.
“A lot of people think there’s more violence in the multicultural communities and there’s no evidence of that.
“This program has more grown out of the fact we know people from emerging refugee communities don’t access our services.”
Ms Hazeleger said language could be a huge barrier, particularly in heightened situations such as during a police call-out or at the emergency department.
“They talk to use about things like lack of trust in authority figures – that comes from home countries, where the only way you get justice might be to pay for justice – if they don’t trust they can get a good result dialing Triple-0, then they’re not going to,” she said.
“Threats can also become about visas – if you’re here on a spousal visa and you’re married to a person who’s abusive, one of the threats that person might hold over you is that you will be sent home.
“One of the forms of family violence is financial abuse – if in your home culture, the senior male is the one that manages all the money, then when you come here and you as a woman start to earn money, some men deal with that and some don’t.”
The Royal Commission outlined a range of recommendations around all forms of diverse communities, including that the state government update its guidelines on policy and procedures in using interpretative services to specifically deal with family violence, and that courts allocate specific funding for family violence interpreters.
It also stated the government should ensure that all Aboriginal family violence interventions are evaluated in a culturally appropriate manner and the Aboriginal component of Child FIRST be expanded to reduce the high rates of removal of Aboriginal children and provide consistency across Victoria.
An Aboriginal person is 7.3 times more likely than a non-Aboriginal person to be an affected family member in a family violence incident.
As family violence begins with gender inequity, the Keeping Families Safe project is also looking at the issue.
Ms Hazeleger is seeking people to participate in a ‘That girl Wodonga’ dance video workshop based on a song about respecting young women in February.
“It will be about running a fun event around respecting young women as able to manage their own life,” she said.
