The NSW Government Minister for Women, Pru Goward, recently made the announcement that the government will be investing in three new domestic violence prevention studies. These three studies will focus on the fact that more evidence is needed in order figure out the funding priorities of government programs in NSW.

The Minister of Women says that the evidence base is important to help determine the effectiveness of current prevention methods and to help create early initiatives for intervention.

Prevention is one of the major ways to stop domestic violence for good rather than to focus on treatments for victims and perpetrators after it happens because then it is just too late and the cycle is very likely to repeat itself.

The three studies will be funded under the Violence Prevention Review and Evaluation Program and that the studies will each provide a response to a prevention outcome that has been recommended by the “It Stops Here” Reforms. One of the studies will be focusing on the best prevention methods for boys and men’s via education, social and recreation methods. According to the leader of that study men and boys need to become engaged in order to help them assume better roles of having respect and engaging in non-violent behaviour.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies will be taking on the other two studies. The first study will focus on providing responses to family violence that are focused on the care of children in order to stop the violence from being carried from generation to generation. Supporting children has been demonstrated by studies as critical in keeping them from repeating the same violence cycle in their adult lives.

Children need a lot of support if they have experienced domestic violence issues because of the fact that they are often not developed enough to know how to cope with the issues that they have experienced and in addition do not know how what is the right way to live in a non-violent setting. Therefore children need guidance in learning how to live a normal life that does not involve violent and toxic relationships so that they do not repeat the violence in their own family situations when they get older. Children from violent homes may also have a lot of mental issues that need to be dealt with before they can move on to lead normal lives. Children are the most crucial point of these studies.

The last study will be focused on evaluating whether the current methods of intervention for various groups and communities that are at risk of having domestic violence and family violence problems are working. Currently these groups and communities are mainly the Aboriginal communities and some other culturally diverse groups.

The details of the Domestic and Family violence studies will be available online for the public to review and give feedback on. Leaders are encouraged by the studies and hope that the studies will help to curb family violence and prevent it from recurring.

Link: http://www.women.nsw.gov.au/news/items/a_stronger_evidence_base_to_prevent_domestic_violence

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