Across Australia there has been almost universal recognition of the fact that generalist services – health, education, social services – play a vital role in identifying and responding to disclosures of DFSV. There has been substantial investment in education and training for frontline workers to build confidence and capacity to undertake trauma-informed indicative screening, to assist clients/patients enhance their safety and to connect them to DFSV specialists. However, the expectation that all frontline workers will be confident in DFSV-informed practice and integrate these skills within their primary or core function is significant. Without authentically connecting with lived experience from both the practitioner’s perspective and the patient/client’s perspective, there is an ongoing risk that a standardised or default screening practice will emerge and perpetuate a tick-the-box approach to identifying and responding to DFSV, which may reduce the impact of an opportunity for disclosure.
CAWLS (funded by the NT PHN) have initiated a project to enhance the capacity of primary care workers to identify and respond DFSV and child sexual abuse. CAWLS has adopted an ongoing partnership model with 10 primary care partners across Central Australia involving a training needs analysis, training and development, governance review and support and ongoing secondary consultation. Underpinning the entirety of the project is a Lived Experience Framework – centering the expertise of victim-survivors of DFSV as well as the lived experience of remote primary healthcare practitioners. Join CAWLS, iTalk Studios and members of our Advisory Groups to reflect on the design approach to incorporating Lived Experience into educational materials and their use in different settings. We will unpack Lived Experience recruitment, workshop design and co-design principles in practice demonstrating how we have used them to generate, test and refine a suite of 12 animations. Through this presentation you will meet Tamara – a young, pregnant indigenous woman, Amy – a remote health nurse, Nikki – an experience Aboriginal Health Worker and Sam – Tamara’s partner.