I am pleased to present to you Family Safety Victoria’s People and Culture Strategy.
In the development of this strategy, we heard from staff across Family Safety Victoria about the kind of workplace in which they want to work. This strategy is a commitment to giving those ideas life and proactively investing in the people and culture at Family Safety Victoria so that everyone, no matter where they work or what role they perform, is Valued, Empowered, Connected, Inspired and Growing.
We know that how services and systems operate is as important as what they deliver. For example, we know from survivors the vital importance of embedding person-centred, cultural and trauma-informed healing, and strengths and rights-based approaches to meeting needs wherever a disclosure of violence is made.
Just as we ensure systems and services disrupt harm and maximise survivors’ space for action, and for increasing children’s and families’ wellbeing, rights and freedoms, so too must we ensure we use this approach to support and develop the full potential of our people.
Investing in our people and in improving our workplace is not a nice-to-have add-on to our work; this Strategy and its delivery is fundamental to our success.
As Audre Lorde wrote, caring is a radical act, an act of radical self-preservation. We live in systems of power designed to erase the well-being of groups of people discriminated against or disadvantaged in society. So it is, in and of itself, as much a political act to affirm the well-being of women under patriarchy as it is to sustain and maximise the wellbeing of people of colour, of Aboriginal people, of people with disabilities and people who identify as LGBTQI who face intersecting, systemic and structural impacts on their wellbeing.
So just as we recognise and advocate to change the systems and structures we work within that create injustices in our communities, so too must we embed structural and system changes in our own organisation. We need to be explicit about changing behaviours, dismantling barriers and oppressive practices, and we must take a proactive approach, such as being proactively anti-racist, in our leadership and in our practice.
We must be courageous in implementing this strategy. All of us will need to step up, connect, and engage in what we are doing and how we are doing it. Every one of us will need to be a leader, and I look forward to us working together to bring this strategy to life.
Eleri Butler
CEO, Family Safety Victoria
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