CMY presents at hearing for Inquiry into capturing data on family violence perpetrators in Victoria
On 5 August 2024, CMY attended a public hearing hosted by the Legislative Assembly Legal and Social Issues Committee regarding the ‘Inquiry into capturing data on family violence perpetrators in Victoria.’
Sameera Fieldgrass, Practice Leader, represented CMY at the hearing and shared key insights from our submission. Her focus was on barriers in data collection with multicultural young people, funding for early intervention and healing, and the need for data and service systems to talk to one another.
Sameera spoke on a panel of representatives from other multicultural services, including inTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence and the Victorian Multicultural Commission. She spoke about the overall lack of longitudinal data for young people, women and victim-survivors in the family violence space. Sameera suggests the data is “missing some of that nuance” due to shame and stigma, specific clinical language and the general data capturing process preventing thorough data collection.
“If language and terminology around Family Violence does not resonate or is not understood by the communities we work with, then data cannot be accurately captured,” says Sameera.
“There is a lot of stuff around language. There is a lot of stuff around how multicultural communities define what family violence is… however, if we switched the language and spoke about harm and safety, you would get a lot more richer data.”
She also talked about the greater need for both funding and space to ensure early intervention happens and victims can heal. Sameera particularly focused on how early intervention ensures that the young people CMY works with “do not become the adult perpetrators of the future.”
“If we are to track possible future perpetrators of harm, it is so vital that we get that long-term funding to be able to track at six months, a year, possibly three years. I know that is a great piece of work, but if you are starting early and services are talking to one another, it then feeds into those tier one services supporting those young people and families longer term.”
“Obviously we recognise there is some information we would not be privy to, but where there is risk identified, particularly around young people as victim-survivors in their own right, and for our work where young people are starting to enact harm within the home – that information could be shared with NGOs and youth-based organisations such as ourselves.”
Read CMY’s full submission to the inquiry here.
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