Financial and Consumer Rights Council members receive economic abuse training

The Department of Justice and Community Safety is working on measures that support family violence and economic abuse victim survivors to recover and build a self-sustaining and confident economic future.

We are progressing this work through:

• appointed the Women’s Legal Service Victoria (WLSV), in partnership with Women’s Information and Referral Program (WIRE), to develop and deliver a training module for financial counsellors to effectively support victim survivors of family violence and economic abuse
• appointed 11 full-time equivalent specialist family violence financial counsellors across 17 DHHS service areas
• engaging the Financial and Consumer Rights Council to encourage members to undertake professional development training in family violence and economic abuse in order to retain members
• established a Family Violence and Economic Abuse reference group to assist community, government and industry to develop a best practice model and guidelines for addressing economic abuse

The 11 Family Violence Financial Counselling positions are funded until July 2021. In the 18 months from October 2016 - June 2018, 4,106 victim-survivors have accessed the service. The Women’s Legal Service Victoria (WLSV) and the Women’s Information and Referral Exchange (WIRE) completed the design and development of family violence and economic abuse training for Victorian financial counsellors in November 2017. The training consists of a two-day foundation module and a one day advanced module. WLSV in partnership with WIRE delivered 25 workshop sessions between January and May 2018 to 179 financial counsellors, which represents the majority of Victorian financial counsellors.

WLSV in partnership with WIRE are funded until July 2021 to continue to deliver family violence training for financial counsellors as part of their professional development program. This will ensure that all new financial counsellors complete the training, and those working with family violence victim/survivors receive up to date training. The training will include the introduction of a one day master class module for specialist practitioners, which will be delivered in 2019.

Implemented.