Focus area 4: Building a system that works together

The MARAM Framework

All community services workforces spanning family violence services, other community services, health, justice and education need to work together to respond to and prevent family violence. The MARAM Framework is the cornerstone of this systemic response.

MARAM has significant workforce implications for the whole service system.

Workers need knowledge and skills to identify and respond to family violence, as relevant to their role. This includes having a shared understanding of the nature of family violence. It also includes common or compatible tools to assess and manage risk.

Organisational leaders need a sound understanding of how MARAM responsibilities apply to their services. They need to track the progress of their organisations in embedding MARAM within their day-to-day operations. They also need to be engaged in processes of continuous improvement.

The Victorian Government has invested more than $130 million in MARAM to date. The current investment of $96 million over four years started in 2021–22 and runs until June 2025. This supports a sector-by-sector approach to workforce development needs.

Major activity during the second RAP will include:

• developing further practice guidance for working with children and young people
• developing purpose-built online practice guides to make it easier for workers to use the guides
• further developing and refining MARAM training. This includes beginning delivery of training in working with perpetrators
• implementing the MARAM Maturity Model to create tools, guidance and other resources. These will help prescribed services understand their progress towards alignment with MARAM
• providing primary prevention workers with clear, best practice guidance in responding to disclosures of family violence in line with MARAM.

Defining and mapping the primary prevention workforce

The primary prevention workforce has grown and diversified over recent years. This diversity has occurred in the types of roles available, as well as the settings where we do prevention work.

Defining and mapping the current workforce will:

• provide a basis for further strategic workforce development based on a clear and detailed picture of the workforce
• provide the basis for understanding the future needs of workers in primary prevention
• illustrate the diverse nature of primary prevention workers across different services and settings
• support ongoing data collection.

Data improvement

We need an accurate understanding of what is happening within the system if we want to improve it. Currently, we do not have enough workforce data for family violence and sexual assault services to do this.

There is little systematic or consistent data collection. It is also hard to compare data between different services and across time. This makes it difficult to conduct analysis and generate actionable insights.

We want to improve data collection as part of the second RAP. This includes regular quantitative data collection on total numbers, vacancies and turnover.

We will also use periodic qualitative research. This will be like the Census of Workforces Intersecting with Family Violence (run in 2017 and 2019–20) and Workforce Pulse Survey (run in 2022).

We will work with peak bodies and services on shared access to the data collected and the results of analysis.

Table 4: Focus area 4 – new actions and continuing activities