Deliver perpetrator programs for low, medium and high-risk perpetrators
Responsible government
- Tasmania
Fourth Action Plan actions
- Improve support and service system responses
- 18 Improve access to and embed trauma-informed support for perpetrators of domestic, family and sexual violence to prevent reoffending and promote rehabilitation and treatment.
What are we doing?
The Tasmanian Government continues to deliver programs to reduce offending by family violence perpetrators. Access to rehabilitative services and programs for family violence perpetrators is essential if we are to achieve long-term change in offending rates.
Under this action, Relationships Australia Tasmania continues to deliver the Men Employing New Strategies behaviour change program for low to medium risk perpetrators; Community Corrections (Tasmanian Department of Justice) delivers the EQUIPS programs for men and women who perpetrate family violence; and the Family Violence Offender Intervention Program (FVOIP) for high-risk perpetrators.
- Deliver perpetrator programs for low, medium and high-risk perpetrators is an action under Safe Homes, Families, Communities: Tasmania’s action plan for family and sexual violence 2019-2022 (Safe Homes, Families, Communities), which invests $26 million over three years from 2019-20 to 2021-22 to prevent and respond to family and sexual violence in Tasmania.
What have we achieved so far?
Safe Homes, Families, Communities commenced implementation on 1 July 2019. Delivery of these perpetrator behaviour change programs is an ongoing initiative that commenced under the previous action plan, Safe Homes, Safe Families: Tasmania’s Family Violence Action Plan 2015-2020.
Key milestones for 2020-21 include:
- Ongoing delivery of Men Employing New Strategies behaviour change program
- Ongoing delivery of EQUIPS programs
- Ongoing deliver of the Family Violence Offender Intervention Program.
Under the National Partnership on COVID-19 Domestic and Family Violence Responses, the Department of Justice has delivered training for Tasmanian Prison Service staff working with family violence offenders to support perpetrator’s behaviour change.
The ’Resilience Program’ focuses on increasing resilience during times of high stress and uncertainty, which has the potential to decrease the occurrence of unhelpful behaviours associated with family violence. The Program aims to increase resilience through the development of social and emotional skills, including self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship skills and responsible decision making.
The Program provides an opportunity to engage perpetrators of family violence in a brief intervention to help build motivation and program engagement prior to undertaking the more intensive Family Violence Offender Intervention Program.
The Program responds to the identified need of increasing resilience in times of high stress and uncertainty associated with COVID-19. It is delivered by the Tasmanian Prison Service to maximum and medium security rated male and female prisoners.
What is next?
Ongoing delivery of the programs.
Under the National Partnership on COVID-19 Domestic and Family Violence Responses, Relationships Australia Tasmania has been allocated funding to develop resources and an App that supports help seeking behaviour to support their current and ongoing work with low to medium risk perpetrators of family violence in Tasmania. The App will be released shortly.
What difference will we make?
The Tasmanian Government is committed to holding perpetrators to account and helping them change their violent behaviours. The intended outcome of this action is for perpetrators to have access to a range of interventions to assist them to stop their violent behaviour and offending.
Timely and appropriate responses to men who use violent and controlling behaviour are a key component of an integrated family violence system. Comprehensive assessment of men in the context of family violence provides an opportunity for contact with the women and children affected by that violence.
A study by Monash University into the outcomes of men’s behaviour change programs showed that the programs workwell, and they continue to work in the long term. FVOIP was independently reviewed in 2017-18 by the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies. It found that offenders who complete this program demonstrate significantly lower levels of family violence reoffending, and offences across fewer family violence categories compared to pre-FVOIP behaviours.