DV-alert
Responsible government
- Commonwealth
Fourth Action Plan actions
- Support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and their children
- 7 Build the workforce capability to ensure delivery of high quality, holistic, trauma-informed and culturally safe supports that respond to the complex needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and their children.
- Respect, listen and respond to the diverse lived experience and knowledge of women and their children affected by violence
- 12 Better equip the service system and communities to address complex forms of violence and harmful cultural practices including early and forced marriage, female genital mutilation/cutting, dowry abuse and human trafficking.
- Improve support and service system responses
- 16 Enable workforces to provide trauma-informed support with a focus on safety and recovery to victims and survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence.
What are we doing?
Under the Fourth Action Plan, DV-alert will train about 18,500 health, allied health, educational, childcare and community support frontline workers to recognise, respond to and appropriately refer people experiencing domestic and family violence.
DV-alert includes a focus on the needs of diverse communities, including:
- women with disability
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women
- women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
More information can be found at the DV-alert website.
- The Commonwealth Government will provide $25.9 million between 2019–20 and 2021–22 to continue the DV-alert nationally accredited training program.
What have we achieved so far?
DV-alert has been delivered by Lifeline Australia since 2007.
Between 1 July 2013 and 30 June 2021 Lifeline trained over 39,810 frontline workers through over 2,655 workshops and awareness sessions. This includes up-to 830 sessions to over 12,480 frontline workers since 1 July 2019 to 30 June 2021.
Key achievements include the continued delivery of accredited training, and ongoing delivery of specialised training streams including Indigenous, Multicultural, Settlement and Working with Women with Disabilities. The non-accredited streams also on offer include Complex forms of Violence, Working with Men Who Use Violence and Working with Interpreters. Accredited training for the General and Working with Women with Disabilities training streams is also available via a flexible eLearning course.
What is next?
Lifeline Australia will continue to deliver DV-alert workshops.
- DV-alert accredited training is an ongoing initiative.
- The Department of Social Services has commissioned an independent evaluation of the DV-alert program. The evaluation commenced in May 2020, with a final report due by the third quarter of 2021.
What difference will we make?
The intended long-term outcomes for the DV-alert program are:
- frontline workers have an improved understanding of domestic and family violence and the Recognise, Respond and Refer model
- frontline workers have increased skills and confidence in recognising, responding to and referring women who are experiencing, or at risk of, domestic and family violence
- networks of support are built between frontline workers, and referral pathways in the community are identified.
The DV-alert program will report against:
- number and locations of training sessions by course type
- proportion of participants who successfully complete the course
- proportion of participants with improved knowledge, skills and confidence to identify, respond to and refer those experiencing domestic or family violence to support services, as identified by a pre and post training survey.