A skilled and capable workforce must be supported by high-quality industry-informed and flexible learning. This must respond to the urgent need to expand our training reach to ensure that all workforces are effectively equipped to respond to and prevent family violence. Innovative teaching models will be developed to meet this demand, along with a pipeline of skilled practitioners who are able to deliver high-quality training ensuring specialist expertise remains deeply embedded in training development and delivery.
Why it’s important
- For workforces to effectively respond to and prevent family violence and deliver reform, they must have access to high quality, culturally safe and specialist informed learning, which is aligned to the capability frameworks.
- The training sector (Registered Training Organisations [RTOs], including TAFEs) requires a sustainable supply of training and assessment professionals with the necessary qualifications and relevant family violence experience. Estimates suggest there are only around 70 trainers across the state equipped to deliver accredited family violence training.
- Specialist knowledge, expertise and lived experience are central in the design and delivery of training. Strong partnerships between the specialist sector and the training and education sectors will support the development and delivery of high-quality learning experiences for existing and future workforces, support any future shifts in capability requirements and expand the capacity for training delivery across Victoria.
Strengthening the Foundations outcomes
- Current and future workforces across all sectors are accessing contemporary, highly accessible and enriching learning experiences across the state, including through TAFE and specialist sector partnerships.
- There are increased links between the education and training sector and specialist family violence prevention and response sectors, so that training content is relevant, specialist-informed, up-to-date and aligned to the capability frameworks, with the specialist sectors and the training sector partnering in the development and delivery of training as required.
- Robust and clearly articulated learning and development pathways with direct links to career growth and progression are developed and understood across the specialist family violence prevention and response sectors, to ensure workers are entering the sector with the right capability and are able to maintain their skills over time.
Key foundational priorities to support this focus area
This Plan focuses on three fundamental pieces of architecture for a sustainable training approach:
- Increasing accredited training options to help ensure that consistency and quality is maintained while the scale of delivery increases.
- Ensuring training is available to workforces that intersect with family violence across the state. To be successful, there is a need to increase the pool of trainers with family violence prevention and response expertise.
- Increasing access to training by reducing the barriers that prevent workers from accessing education and training, including cost.
Actions
2.1 Develop accredited units of competency in family violence response and prevention to meet the skill and capability requirements for the future specialist workforces and the broader workforces that intersect with family violence to support alignment to MARAM.
2.2 Develop accredited units of competency in gender equity and prevention of violence against women to meet the industry needs of a current and emerging primary prevention workforce.
2.3 Enhance the accredited course in working with perpetrators for Men’s Behaviour Change facilitators to increase access to the qualification while maintaining integrity and quality.
2.4 Develop a whole-of-institution TAFE approach to primary prevention of violence against women, complemented by a model to enhance TAFE capability for early identification and intervention in family violence.
2.5 Develop innovative education and professional development options aligned to the Responding to Family Violence Capability Framework, commencing with foundational family violence e-learning to complement face-to-face training.
2.6 Increase the number of experienced trainers with family violence response and prevention content and training delivery expertise by partnering with peak bodies to support practitioners to complete a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.
2.7 Develop and deliver a train-the-trainer program in partnership with the specialist sector, to grow the pool of family violence trainers to deliver unaccredited training.
2.8 Provide supplementary professional development on the reformed family violence system (including MARAM and information sharing) for newly qualifying and existing holders of the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.
2.9 Undertake research to develop ‘best practice’ teaching and assessment approaches in VET family violence training to inform effective design and delivery strategies for TAFEs, Learn Locals and other Registered Training Organisations.
2.10 Undertake action research to monitor and progressively enhance outcomes across the suite of vocational family violence training projects, to provide early advice on what is working and where improvements can be made in relation to trainer capability, learning resources, access to appropriate training for students from diverse backgrounds, and workforce development outcomes.
2.11 Establish prevention officers in TAFE settings to build capability across the training sector.
2.12 Introduce eligibility exemptions: to increase student participation, exemptions from upskilling and commencement eligibility requirements apply to the accredited course in Identifying and Responding to Family Violence Risk delivered by Skills First-funded training providers.
2.13 Embed family violence response and prevention in relevant pre-service courses and professional development for a range of professions that intersect with family violence, so that graduates are ‘work-ready’.
Updated