Print - Lived experience showcase

Date:: 28 Mar 2023

This collection showcases examples of lived experience expertise and guidance for engaging people with lived experience of family violence and sexual assault in the development of policy and services.

It is aimed at promoting best practice and sharing lessons across existing lived experience initiatives.

The showcase helps us celebrate and build on the unique role lived experience expertise has played in Victoria’s family violence reforms.

Examples in the showcase were originally collected as part of the 2022 lived experience forum called 'More than our story: action, wisdom and change' that featured conversations with advocates such as Rosie Batty, Grace Tame and Amani Haydar.

Family Safety Victoria will continue to update the showcase to support the Family Violence Lived Experience Strategy.

Please contact fsv.engagement@familysafety.vic.gov.au with examples you would like to see added.

Initiatives

A range of initiatives across organisations which highlight the way people with lived experience can inform policy design and service development.

Government

Pride, Respect, Equality campaign from Respect Victoria
Victims of Crime Consultative Committee is a forum for members to discuss policies, practices and systems’ reform that can improve the experience of victims of crime and provides advice to the Attorney-General and Minister for Victim Support.
Victim Survivors' Advisory Council (VSAC) was created to give people with lived experience of family violence a voice and ensure they are consulted in Victoria's family violence reform program.
VSAC share what Respect Is
Victoria's Family Violence Memorial
Department of Families, Fairness and Housing Framework for trauma-informed practice(opens in a new window).
Department of Families, Fairness and Housing is developing tools and resources for community services focussed on the Client Voice.

Sector

Berry Street’s Youth engagement (Y-Change) Y-Change is a social and systemic change platform for young people aged 18 to 30 with lived experiences of socioeconomic disadvantage.
Embedding family violence lived experience, Safe and Equal reflections on the establishment of Safe and Equal’s Expert Advisory Panel.
LGBTI lived experience at Thorne Harbour Health
Margins to the Mainstream: Preventing violence against women with disabilities is designed to amplify the voices of women with lived experience of disabilities.
NOOR - ‘Narrating Our Own Resilience’ Survivor-Advocates are culturally and linguistically diverse victim-survivors who influence policy, service provisions and media reporting with lived experience.
Our Watch - Voices for Change a media advocacy program for the prevention of violence against women.
Safe Steps Survivor Advocate Program is designed to empower women who have a lived experience of family violence to participate in opportunities to raise awareness of family, domestic and gender-based violence, influence policy development, service planning and practice.
Sustainable and Transformative Employment Pathways (STEP) project supports victim-survivors of family violence to find employment and achieve greater financial wellbeing.
The Independent Collective of Survivors (ICOS) empowering domestic, family and sexual violence victim survivors’ diverse lived expertise to reduce gendered violence.
Voices for Change was Domestic Violence NSW's first lived experience project aimed at bringing an end to domestic, family and sexual violence through media advocacy.

Community

Sisters in Law project is a national foundation established in January 2021 by survivor advocates to help women navigate the Family Court.
Vicki Cleary Day is an annual event held at Coburg Football Club to honour women killed by men’s violence and to raise awareness about men’s violence against women.
Wisdom in Practice a guided reverse mentoring program where social work graduates and their supervisors are mentored by victim-survivors.

Frameworks, research and resources

You can learn more about how to support leadership, participation and engagement of people with lived experience as well access contemporary research and critical essays on the role of lived experience in major social policy reform.

Articles

Keep up to date with Safe and Equal bulletins
Opinion: Listen to the powerful voice of victim survivors by Geraldine Bilston.

Guides and Frameworks

A critical reflection tool for family violence practitioners working with criminalised women developed by Safe and Equal in partnership with Flat Out.
Client voice framework for community services (DFFH) assists community services to critically assess their current practice in relation to seeking, hearing and responding to the client voice.
Experts by Experience Framework by Safe and Equal aims to enhance the ability of specialist family violence services to provide opportunities for survivor advocates to influence policy development, service planning and practice.
How to have respectful conversations about money by WIRE gives you the skills to talk about money with partners, family members, friends and service providers.
Learning from lived experience – a guide for professionals supporting children and young people experiencing family violence by Safe and Equal.
Pride in Prevention Evidence Guide A guide to primary prevention of family violence experienced by LGBTIQ communities by Rainbow Health.
Safe and Equal Person-centred risk assessment with victim survivors with disability seminar

Research

Safe and Equal Resource Library
The Perpetration project the first national research study on the perpetration of violence in intimate, domestic and family settings in Australia by The Equality Inistitute.
WEAVERS is a group of women who have experienced family violence and/or sexual violence and who play a role in ‘weaving’ lived experience into research and training at the University of Melbourne.

Strategies & Reports

Client Partnership Strategy for The Orange Door
Consultation with victim survivors for the next National Plan
Family Safety Victoria Lived Experience Strategy
Melbourne City Mission and Berry Street Y-Change Response to National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children
The Batty Effect

I have developed the following are self-care strategies that work for me. I encourage others reading this to make their own plan for self-care to help manage the vicarious trauma of our work.

Social

Spend time with my friends and family and their animals. Seek balance between people who uplift and people who drag me down. Make time for myself. Make time for fun. Don’t be on call 24/7.

Cultural

Faith and prayer. Playlists for dancing, chilling and meditation.

Creative writing, poetry and reading. Watching film, TV and documentaries.

Photography, taking photos of tiny things helps me change my perspective and see and appreciate the beauty around me.

Health

Deep breathing, mediation, and stretching every day. Imagining my breath like a wave one hand on tummy, one on chest.

Getting sunshine and natural light.

Relaxation, remedial massage and lavender oil baths.

Acupuncture and Chinese medicine works for me.

Nutrition

Eating lots of fruit and vegetables and foods that help with establishing and maintaining a healthy gut. Keep hydrated.

Connect with nature

Pat other people’s dogs and cats. Travel to insanely beautiful places. Walk in nature every day and walk barefoot on grass. Watch sunrises and sunsets. Take time to recover and reset.

Exercise

Try a new form of exercise such as Yoga, Pilates, gym, weights, swimming, water workout classes, dancing, Zumba, at home gym, online classes, trampolining. Swim in the ocean and walk on the beach. Avoid sitting for long periods and use a standing desk.

Mental health

Create things to look forward to. Spend time on meaningful things.

I pace myself at work. Drop commitments if disrupting work life balance.

Have a regular routine. I set an alarm to remind me to go to bed.

Make goals and dreams for the future. Break them down into small achievable steps.

Moderate things that are bad for mental health such as too much technology, social media, the news, alcohol, smoking, sugar, fatty foods, take-away food.

Creative works

Victim survivors have contributed powerful voices, insights and creative contributions to promote social change and raise awareness.

Victim Survivors' Advisory Council member Yara* has written a poem about what respect is for her as part of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence and International Day of People with a Disability.

Yara* lives with multiple disabilities and chronic illnesses and is a victim survivor of family violence, childhood abuse, and institutionalised abuse. She became the Disability Representative on Victoria's Victim Survivors' Advisory Council in January 2020. The video below is an adaptation of the spoken word piece.

Respect now, respect for the future, respect forever YARA

View transcript

Respect Is...

Respect is patience, empathy, kindness, being loving and gentle.

Respect is respecting and loving yourself first, nurturing yourself.

Respect is living free from violence, abuse, discrimination and phobias.

Respect is acknowledging you were born from a woman, you came from a woman and there wouldn’t be any future without women.

Respect is not putting disabled women down, just for being who we are.

Respect is loving and embracing all diversities, all races, all cultures, all genders, all sexualities, all abilities and peoples from all walks of life.

Respect is feeling safe in your body mind and spirit.

Respect is knowing you can say how you feel without being put down or having your feelings dismissed or ignored.

Respect is feeling like you can speak your mind, and say anything you want, without being judged or put down for it.

Respect is being able to easily say no to anything you’re not comfortable with.

Respect is having disagreements but being able to talk through them, working out solutions together, negotiating and meeting each other half-way.

Respect is knowing when you need space to nurture yourself and your relationships.

Respect is making equal sacrifices for the good of your family’s and relationships.

Respect is doing anything for the person you love but knowing your own boundaries.

Respect is sticking by the ones you love in the hardest of times, whilst drawing the line on having no tolerance for and making no excuses for abuse.

Respect is being loved for your good, your bad and your ugly, and having the patience to work through your own and your partner's issues.

Respect is learning from mistakes and feeling safe to make more mistakes.

Respect is knowing you can count on them to do right by you, knowing they have your back.

Respect is not having any negative feelings in your gut and trusting your gut instinct and your heart.

Respect is healing your trauma as much as possible so that it doesn’t impact your partner, your children and the next generations.

Respect is not making excuses for when you are in the wrong.

Respect is learning from your mistakes and seeking help if you can’t change.

Respect is having the humility to say sorry, right your wrongs, learn from your mistakes and change your behaviours.

Respect is treating all women and peoples how you would like to be treated yourself, and equal respect to how you would treat your own daughter.

Respect is doing our best to change the housing and homelessness system so that no one escaping family violence is forced into homelessness.

Respect is intervening in family violence when it’s safe to do so.

Respect is being an ally and a friend to all victim survivors of family violence.

Respect is educating children and young people that abuse and violence is never acceptable, normal or OK.

Respect is acknowledging and remembering everyone who has died from family violence.

Respect now, respect for the future, respect always.

Respect, before it’s too late…
Children and young people are hardly ever a part of conversations about their experiences of family violence and hard times. They have important stories to share and by not hearing them, you’re missing a massive part of the family violence narrative. As part of Family Safety’s Victoria’s upcoming Lived Experience Forum More than our story: action, wisdom and change, Kirra and Monique co-facilitated workshops to hear directly from children and young people.

Kirra, a Lived Experience Consultant with Berry Street’s Y-Change initiative and a Youth Focused Peer Support Worker at Take Two Northern Healing and Recovery Program, collaboratively worked with clinician Monique Balfour, combining professional knowledge and lived experience.

We spoke to young people aged 10 to 22 about their thoughts on services, mental health, workers, courts and any issues or areas that matter to them when experiencing family violence. We had options for young people to choose how they would like to be involved in creating change and what they felt was most important for adults to know. We ran one group session and a few individual sessions where we explored conversations around the importance of listening to children and young people, changes they wanted to see in the system, the impact family violence has on their mental health and what makes them feel safe and unsafe.

We also had a live illustrator, Zahra Zainal, attend one of the workshops and captured our key themes and discussions from all the workshops into the illustration below. All the young people who participated have consented to this being shared with the hope for change. Children and young people with a lived experience of disadvantage are activists, advocates, knowledge holders and in their own right, leading change.
Created by VSAC’s Aboriginal members as an enduring symbol of their collective work.

What is a message stick?

In Aboriginal culture message sticks were used to communicate, whether it be an invitation or notification of some type, between different clans. I have read the history of message sticks and one thing that stuck out for me was that it allowed the carrier safety into another clan to deliver a message. I am hopeful that the VSAC message stick creates a space for the members to speak safely and feel supported during the meetings and consultations. I think VSAC is already a safe space, but I love that my culture can be a part of that safe feeling also. Chantelle VSAC member, 2022

How was it made?

The timber I used is Blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) which I sourced from the Country of my belonging - Lake Condah, Kerrup Gunditj Clan, Gunditjmara Country. Blackwood is a highly utilised and valued resource for Gunditjmara. The timber is used for tools and weapons such as boomerangs, digging sticks and coolamons. Seeds from the Blackwood can be collected and used as a food source, and the bark is traditionally used by Gunditjmara as a treatment for rheumatism. I recycled this piece of timber from an old tree that had fallen and had been cleared from the side of a track. I've used contemporary tools to shape and finish the message stick, whereas traditionally Gunditjmara used stone tools to shape their works. Ben Church, Artist, 2022

What does the design represent?

Orange is a colour that represents work in the Family Violence space. Respect Victoria states ‘Orange is a vibrant colour that symbolises hope for a future free from violence’. When The Orange Door service was being discussed, the reason for the colour was to be noticeable so the issue is no longer hidden. The issue is spoken about more. To me all these things are what VSAC is about. We are a part of a group making change, wanting a better future and talking about issues that previously haven’t been discussed so openly. Chantelle VSAC member, 2022

How will the message stick be used by VSAC?

There are always two Aboriginal members on the VSAC council to support each other. When one member leaves the other member stays on for a further year to support the new member.

The longer serving member works with an Aboriginal artist of their choice to add their design to the message stick and passes the message stick to the next member. This symbolises that we build on our collective knowledge and pass our knowledge to the next member to continue our work.
A prison is not a home

I need a home to heal

A prison is not a home

I need a place to land and learn

I need a home to heal

A prison is not a home

A prison is a hole

A cage of torture harm control

attempting to tear out my soul

What’s their objective

What’s their goal

They can’t really want to steal my soul?

For I am human

But not in these moments- you don’t see me

You stripped me, humiliated me and threw away the key

It’s cold, I am alone – I hear the painstaking cries

The guilt the shame- this is not a game

Fear-desperation -angst and me

This is exactly how I imagined it to be.

Isolation discrimination this is an abomination

I am mistreated and abused- I am, Who am I?

I am a lover not a fighter but it’s the fight you will see,

Without the fight I wouldn’t be free

You remove me from community

my safety my space

Tearing me from children and family

I can’t bear the look on their face,

The shame the guilt the sheer disgrace

I wanna get the f**k outta this place

These cages these cells these funky smells

I am prisoner now- no name but a number,

No dignity no identity no serenity

But this does not last

You with your badge of torture

Look who I have in my corner

Sisterhood -love respect and nurture

Empathy and understanding

Now I feel like I am landing

For find comfort within these walls

From all the women who are standing tall

You will not break us because we matter

Women of colour I see you I hear you

Transgender folk I see you

Both old and young I hold you

The family friends and children I can feel you

The unborn child I will fight for you

The so many deaths in custody I scream for you

I matter -you matter- we all matter

We are not disposable; we will not be silenced – we will be heard

My heart breaks from all that prison takes

I need a home not a cage

My heart breaks from all that prison takes
Beyond Giving Voice: Partnering with young people with a lived experience to imagine and create radical change

As part of their strategic advocacy work, the Y-Change team made a policy submission to the Victorian Youth Strategy called 'Beyond Giving Voice: Partnering with young people with a lived experience to imagine and create radical change'. This submission puts the lived experiences and expertise of young people at its centre. The underpinning message is the importance of embedding lived experience-led approaches to realise service system and cultural transformation. Read more about the submission on the Berry Street website.

The artwork was commissioned by Y-Change and illustrates one of the core recommendations that arose from conversations as part of our submission response – to have specialist Youth Central Hubs all around Victoria for young people experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage, where they can drop in and get their needs met 24/7. The Hubs would be co-created in partnership with young Victorians who would use them.

Artwork by Chadai Chamoun.

Video content

Victim survivors have contributed powerful voices, insights and creative contributions to promote social change and raise awareness.

Celebrating International Women's Day 2021 - Aishwarya Vishwanath

Current member of the Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council, Aish Vishwanath speaks about the importance of International Women’s Day 2021 to acknowledge the strength, resilience and fierceness of women.