Implement recommendations from the Indigenous Family Violence Ten Year Plan

The Dhelk Dja Action Plan Working Group was established with the responsibility for reviewing ‘completed’ recommendations from the mid-term evaluation. They are also responsible for considering how ‘ongoing’ recommendations can be captured in the first Dhelk Dja 3 Year Action Plan or Dhelk Dja Investment Strategy. This aims to provide a more streamlined and consistent approach for the Partnership Forum and Government to prioritise work and monitor progress against these priorities.

The specific priorities and supporting activities related to the mid-term evaluation recommendations and Recommendation 144 include:

Strategic Priority 3: Self-determining Aboriginal family violence support and services

• Undertake ongoing monitoring of the implementation of the Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM), including within Aboriginal organisations, to ensure continuous quality improvement and strengthen approaches to family violence risk assessment and management for people from Aboriginal communities.
• Implement the DHHS Prioritised Funding Policy for family violence service funding.
• Review the implementation approach for Aboriginal frontline service investment to ensure it has addressed service fragmentation and supports consistency of service access to culturally responsive programs.
• Strategic Priority 5: Aboriginal-led and informed innovation, data and research.
• Develop a Dhelk Dja Monitoring, Evaluation and Accountability Plan (MEAP) – a suite of Aboriginal defined indicators, outcomes and accountability mechanisms to monitor progress of the Dhelk Dja Agreement.
• Undertake an Aboriginal-led evaluation of the Preventing the Cycle of Violence Aboriginal Fund and Aboriginal Community Initiatives Fund that builds Aboriginal service and communities’ capacity in data collection, interpretation and translation; and using local data and evaluation methodologies to inform planning, prioritising and reporting.
• Determine what data Aboriginal communities need and want to collect that builds an evidence base, and hold service providers to account, around family violence and family safety, particularly for the most vulnerable cohorts in the community - women, children and Elders. Identify the gaps and data linkages in current data collection processes and systems.
• Invest in data collection mechanisms, based on Aboriginal-defined measures of safety and wellbeing, that generate qualitative and quantitative feedback from service users. This includes capturing services’ cultural responsiveness.
• Work with relevant departments and agencies including The Orange Door Network, to reduce the number and percentage of cases where Aboriginality is recorded as ‘unknown’ or ‘not stated’. This includes the identification of Aboriginal children where the presenting parent is not Aboriginal.
• Develop a data-sharing protocol between data custodians and the Dhelk Dja Partnership Forum to improve access to data, create regional profiles and inform planning and prioritisation.

The Family Violence Data Collection Framework has been developed and released to improve the collection of data specific to family violence, including in Aboriginal communities to set out a consistent approach to collecting data on Aboriginal identification.

A dedicated data position in the Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) to support the Dhelk Dja Partnership Forum in accessing and interpreting family violence data has been established. Further work to improve the access to and validity of the data is underway.

This Monitoring Evaluation and Accountability plan, including the Dhelk Dja theory of change and data plan, was endorsed by the Dhelk Dja Partnership Forum in 2020-21.

An Aboriginal-led evaluation of the Preventing the Cycle of Violence Aboriginal Fund and Aboriginal Community Initiatives Fund has been undertaken with the final report to be tabled at the Dhelk Dja Partnership Forum in 2020-21.

Forecast implementation date: 30 June 2021.