Can our service systems move from siloed to person-centred approaches that improve the wellbeing and safety of all women and children?
Kate Finch, our Strategic Innovation Manager, shares her insights into opportunities for inclusive policy reform based on what we’re seeing at the Disability Royal Commission.
Last week the Disability Royal Commission held a hearing investigating violence against women and girls with disability, with a specific focus on family, domestic and sexual violence (DFSV).
Women and girls with disability experience disproportionate impacts of DFSV: they experience this violence at far higher rates than the rest of the population and there are multiple barriers to seeking help and accessing justice. This violence is driven by ableism (and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls, combined with pervasive racism), and structural and systemic discrimination affects how and where these women and girls can seek help.
A critical time for policy
In light of this, the Commission’s work comes at a critical time for policy development in Australia. There is a huge opportunity to recognise these interdependent impacts in the raft of policy processes currently underway, including the next national plan to reduce violence against women and children; the new framework for protecting Australia’s children; the national partnership agreement on mental health; and the next iteration of the national disability strategy.
Disabled people and their representative organisations have consistently and tirelessly advocated that, across these policy frameworks, there has been a failure to uphold the rights of women and girls with disability, to acknowledge the different forms of violence they experience (including the settings in which this violence occurs), and to address the systems and structures that drive this violence and prevent these women and girls accessing the services and support available to others.
Evidence from the Justice Project
On day one of the hearing, Dr Jacoba Brasch QC, President of the Law Council of Australia, provided evidence from the Law Council’s Justice Project which is echoed by the health and legal services in our network. People with disability commonly experience cumulative and complex social and legal issues that affect their health, safety and wellbeing. The Justice Project report also speaks to the reduced longer term community costs (including child protection, the cost of violence against women and children, and homelessness) from upfront investment in key services, including legal assistance, which are necessary to ensure access to justice.
Drawing on Health Justice Australia’s contribution, the Justice Project report recognised the growing evidence of the role of health justice partnership as a response to complex, intersecting health and legal need. It recommended that we, along with legal service peaks and the Law Council, ‘should pursue sector-to-sector partnerships which facilitate the expansion and delivery of multidisciplinary collaborations and identify how key challenges can be overcome’.
Safe, discreet and timely
While there is more to learn about how to ensure that services are safe, accessible and effective for women and girls with disability, our recent report looking at the role of health justice partnership as a response to domestic and family violence identifies the opportunity offered by safe, discreet and timely legal assistance to women and girls in trusted and supportive settings which they already access.
As I listened to the evidence being given in the Commission hearing last week, and revisited the Justice Project report, I reflected on the unique opportunity that lies in the web of policy development processes currently underway. If the health and well-being of all women and their children is centred as shared outcomes across these policy frameworks, there is an opportunity to name and address the structures and systems that not only result in some women and girls, including those with disability, being disproportionately affected by violence but also leave them unable to access the help they need. This includes structures within the current design and delivery of services delivered or funded by government. Cross-government commitments and acceptance of responsibilities, matched with investment in effective solutions, could see these service systems move from siloed to person-centred approaches that improve the wellbeing and safety of all women and children. The optimist in me wants to believe that this opportunity will not be missed.