Amend the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic)

The Victorian Family Violence Risk Assessment and Risk Management Framework (the Framework) has been redeveloped and is now known as the Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM). The MARAM is an important mechanism for facilitating shared understanding and building consistent and high quality family violence practice throughout the service system.

Consistent with Recommendation 2, amendments to the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic) were made on 14 June 2017 that embed the Framework in legislation. The amendments:

• empower the responsible Minister to approve a Framework
• require prescribed organisations and funded agencies to align with the Framework
• require annual reporting by the relevant Minister on implementation of the Framework, and periodic review of the Framework to ensure it continues to represent evidence-based best practice

This provides a clear authorising environment, requiring relevant organisations that are prescribed to align their policies, procedures, practice guidance and tools with the Framework, ensuring a consistent, system-wide approach to risk assessment and management.

From September 2018, prescribed Framework organisations, which are required to align with the MARAM Framework, and Minister’s annual reporting obligations, were prescribed in the Family Violence Protection (Information Sharing and Risk Management) Regulations 2018. Additional services and organisations are expected to be prescribed in September 2020.

Implementation approaches to support the embedding of the MARAM across prescribed organisations is underway via relevant Victorian Government departments and targeted through sector grants. The implementation project is ongoing via a maturity approach.

A suite of victim-focused MARAM Practice Guides, designed against each of the 10 MARAM responsibilities for practice (outlined in the legislative instrument) were released in July 2019. The guides support professionals across the service system to understand their roles and responsibilities in relation to family violence risk identification, assessment and management responses, including information sharing, referral and multi-agency responses.

Family Safety Victoria continues to support development of perpetrator-focused MARAM Practice Guides that will also be designed against the same 10 MARAM responsibilities, anticipated for release in 2020.