Economic abuse is one of the most insidious and least funded dimensions of domestic and family violence. It traps survivors not through physical force, but through financial dependency, coerced debt, disrupted employment histories, and the impossible arithmetic of leaving violence with no income and children to support. For these women, crisis accommodation is not safety, it is a pause before the next crisis.

Yet Australia's DFV response system continues to concentrate investment at the crisis end of the continuum. The recovery phase - the moment after a woman has left, when she must rebuild her economic life from scratch - remains critically underfunded and underserved.

This presentation draws on five years of program data and practice wisdom from Arise Foundation Australia, the country's only organisation dedicated exclusively to trauma informed employment pathways for DFV survivors. Founded in 2021 in Western Sydney, Arise has positively impacted more than 560 women and children, with 54% of 2024 to 2025 graduates moving directly into employment, education or training — and zero women placed into employment returning to their perpetrator.

Tasnia Alam Hannan, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, will present Arise's integrated model: combining employment readiness, digital literacy, financial counselling, legal assistance and wraparound recovery support to move women from financial hardship to genuine independence. She will explore the structural barriers that make economic safety so difficult to achieve after violence — including rental discrimination, coerced debt, digital exclusion and the gendered penalties of interrupted careers — and demonstrate how cross sector collaboration between DFV services, employers, financial institutions and government can close the gap.

Attendees will leave with an evidence based framework for understanding employment as a safety outcome, practical insights for embedding economic empowerment into DFV practice, and a case for why recovery investment is the missing piece of Australia's response to this crisis.

This paper advances feminist institutional ethnography as a critical methodological framework for examining how sexual harassment is mediated, managed, and often obscured across interconnected institutional sites, from pedagogical spaces to legal arenas. By foregrounding lived experience as an analytic point of entry, it interrogates how institutional processes, discourses, and power relations co-constitute responses to sexual harassment, revealing the mechanisms through which gendered harm is normalised and accountability diffused.
Drawing on my doctoral research, the analysis situates experiential accounts alongside institutional practices to trace how educational and legal systems—shaped by hierarchy, authority, and deeply entrenched gendered norms—operate to produce and regulate narratives of harm. I argue that these systems frequently “weaponise neutrality,” invoking procedural fairness, objectivity, and due process in ways that selectively legitimise certain forms of testimony while marginalising or discrediting others. In doing so, institutional actors reproduce asymmetries pf power that shape whose voices are heard, whose claims are validated, and whose experiences are rendered peripheral or invisible.
Empirically, the paper synthesises statistical data, survivor narratives, ethnographic accounts, institutional case studies, media reporting, and feminist scholarship. These materials function as analytically generative sites through which institutional relations can be traced. This multi-sited approach highlights how everyday sexism and gender-based violence within academic contexts persist and are rearticulated in legal contestations.
The analysis is further deepened through autoethnographic reflection and personal testimony, which disrupt conventional hierarchies of evidence by foregrounding embodied experience. Together, these accounts illuminate how institutional power is not only imposed but also navigated and contested in practice.
Ultimately, the paper argues that sexual harassment is not incidental but structurally embedded within the everyday logics of academic and legal institutions. By making these dynamics visible, it challenges dominant narratives of neutrality and underscores the limitations of reforms that fail to address underlying power relations.

This workshop focuses on the Trauma-and Gendered Violence Informed Care Framework to Risk (The Framework) utilised in a healthcare setting in South Australia for supporting victim-survivors of gendered violence. Health and Recovery, Trauma Safety Services (HaRTSS) has developed an intersectional, consumer-led risk framework for psycho-social risk domains that impact the health and wellbeing for victim-survivors of gendered violence. This framework underpinned by principles of consumers co-design and cultural humility ensures the healthcare responses are responsive to the complex healthcare impacts arising from gendered violence. The psycho-social risk domains are:
• Suicide
• Self-Harm
• Pregnancy & Perinatal Mental Health
• Early Relational Trauma and Child Safety
• Alcohol and Other Drugs
• Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE)
• Domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV)
• Non-fatal Strangulation
This Framework with its adaptation of suicide prevention approach for community-based gendered violence sector is a precedent-setting model. At the centre of Framework is an understanding of how the interplay between risks may contribute to increased likelihood of risk for victim-survivors.
This Framework is the first of its kind blueprint and provides a paradigm shift in how healthcare services approach the psycho-social burdens compounded by intersectionality in a context of gendered violence. Importantly this approach reduces risk of re-traumatising during assessment with the aim to support the development of safety planning and enhanced therapeutic, health and wellbeing outcomes.
Woven through the workshop will be three key learnings:
• Asking about psycho-social risk domains matters
• Healthcare is improved through centring Lived Experience
• An understanding of a framework to risk that is trauma-and gendered violence informed care
Applying this framework ensures practitioners do not re-traumatise victim-survivors during risk and safety assessments. By building risk profiles grounded in our consumers unique contexts, we will directly improve both safety planning and therapeutic healing.

Coercive control is increasingly being understood for the significant and ongoing harm for both victim/survivors and people using violence. It is well established that men who hold violence-supportive attitudes experience poorer health and wellbeing outcomes, including increased rates of psychological distress, suicidal ideation, problem gambling and high levels of alcohol use. Despite this, these men are engaging with our health and community services where opportunities to screen for, and respond to their use of violence / coercion, are often missed.

Current screening remains heavily focussed on harm experienced by victim/survivors, with little to no asking about behaviours of those using violence. As a result, these behaviours frequently remain unexamined in our service responses, limiting opportunities for early intervention, accountability and improved safety for victim/survivors.

Sexual coercion in particular is under-identified within our current screening frameworks, in part due to the language around violence that we use in our screening. This under-recognition of sexual coercion has significant implications for practice including for health responses, safety and systems accountability.

At a time of such significant reform, including legislative change and the recent Royal Commission into DFSV in South Australia, this is a pivotal time to strengthen how services identify and respond to coercive control, with a specific focus on sexual coercion. These reforms provide a platform for us to reconsider how screening tools are designed to enable surfacing of the invisible issues.

This presentation will explore how these reform opportunities can be used to improve the identification of coercive control in health and related service settings, and to strengthen the visibility of sexual coercion within screening and practice.

The intersection of family violence and alcohol and other drug (AOD) use continues to challenge service systems, particularly where responses remain siloed across family violence, AOD, mental health, and child protection sectors. These fragmented approaches can create barriers to engagement, inconsistent intervention pathways, and missed opportunities for sustained behaviour change.

This presentation explores how the U-Turn Men’s Behaviour Change Program (MBCP) has been adapted across community and residential rehabilitation settings to respond to complex presentations involving family violence and AOD use. The program integrates family violence intervention with AOD-informed practice while maintaining a clear focus on accountability and behaviour change.

U-Turn is a structured Men’s Behaviour Change Program for men on Intervention Orders and includes supplementary individual counselling support to strengthen engagement, reinforce learning, and support individualised behaviour change. Regular family safety contact is maintained throughout the program to ensure victim-survivor safety remains central to practice. The program was independently evaluated by Monash University in 2019, highlighting the value of integrated responses to family violence and AOD use.

A key feature of the program is its adaptability across different service environments. Delivery within community and residential rehabilitation settings requires consistent program fidelity while remaining responsive to participant complexity.

The program also extends into regional communities, improving access to specialist Men’s Behaviour Change interventions in areas with limited service availability.

This presentation will examine how adapting Men’s Behaviour Change Programs across service contexts can strengthen engagement, accountability, and responsiveness while maintaining victim-survivor safety in complex presentations.

This interactive workshop, led by members of the YWCA Australia’s Amplifying Voices Advocacy Group and YWCA Program Facilitators, will explore why lived experience voices are essential to creating effective, responsive, and equitable systems. Amplifying Voices is made up of women from Larrakia Country in the Greater Darwin Region of the Northern Territory with lived experience of domestic, family, and sexual violence (DFSV) and homelessness, who now work collectively to influence change. The NT has consistently recorded the highest rates of DFSV in Australia, with women—particularly Aboriginal women—disproportionately affected. In this context, survivor-led approaches that centre lived experience are urgently needed.

Grounded in lived-expertise, Survivor-Advocates will share reflections on what meaningful inclusion looks and feels like in practice. Participants will gain insight into how lived experience strengthens service design, policy development, and decision-making, leading to more relevant outcomes for victim survivors.

The workshop will present key learnings from the Amplifying Voices Program Review, highlighting what works when embedding lived experience leadership. Advocates will share successes, challenges, and practical examples of co-design, capacity building, and advocacy in action.

Through shared learning and interactive activities, Survivor-Advocates will lead participants through critical reflections on their own practice, systems, and organisational approaches. Participants will identify gaps, challenges, and opportunities, and begin translating these into practical, context-specific actions.

Participants will explore tangible strategies such as creating safe and ethical engagement spaces, building trust, supporting leadership pathways, and integrating lived experience into governance and decision-making.

The session concludes by inviting participants to identify three practical actions they will take to embed lived-experience leadership. These commitments will be collated and shared, modelling meaningful participation and collective accountability.

This presentation explores family violence (FV) misidentification within marginalised communities, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ people and women who use FV. We position misidentification as both a systems issue and a form of coercive control that can extend and compound harm. Situated within the broader context of systems abuse and social entrapment, the presentation examines how institutional responses can reinforce abusive dynamics, particularly when family violence within LGBTQIA+ relationships is poorly understood or viewed through cisgender and heteronormative assumptions.

Marginailised communities experience significant structural marginalisation, discrimination, and barriers to safe service engagement, increasing vulnerability to misidentification and institutional harm. The presentation will explore how systems including policing, child protection, and family violence services can struggle to accurately identify coercive control, self-defence, trauma responses, and predominant aggressor dynamics within LGBTQIA+ relationships and in relation to women who use FV. In these contexts, misidentification can become an extension of abuse itself, with systems unintentionally colluding with coercive control through inappropriate interventions.

Drawing on program data, evaluation findings, and practice experience, the presentation will examine rates and patterns of misidentification within Queerspace FV programs, alongside intervention responses and outcomes. Particular attention will be given to the development of a dedicated perpetrator program stream for people who have experienced misidentification, and the importance of collaboration across perpetrator interventions, victim-survivor services, and broader systems responses.

Grounded in gendered, intersectional, and social justice frameworks, the session will explore the role of systems reform in preventing and responding to misidentification. While practitioners and services play an important role, responsibility sits with the systems that create and respond to this harm. The presentation will highlight opportunities for reform while emphasising the need for person-centred, holistic responses that support safety, healing, accountability, and connection across the whole of a person's journey.

Family, Domestic, Sexual Violence and Child Sexual Abuse (FDSV) are serious public health issues that can cause significant physical, psychological and financial harm. A full-time General Practitioner (GP) is likely to see up to 5 women per week who have experienced some form of intimate partner abuse in the last 12 months. People who have experienced child sexual abuse are 2.4 times more likely to have 6 or more GP visits in the last 12 months.

Primary health care professionals, such as GPs, are often the first point of contact for FDSV victim-survivors due to the physical and/or mental health impacts from abuse/violence. Therefore, they have an important role in prevention, early identification and responding appropriately to disclosures.

Capital Health Network (CHN), ACT’s Primary Health Network (PHN), has established the FDSV Training and Link Worker Support Program with key service providers as part of the national Supporting the Primary Care Sector Response to FDSV Pilot, funded through the Australian Government’s PHN Program. This initiative aims to strengthen primary care professionals’ capacity to recognise and respond to FDSV by offering tailored and trauma-informed training and resources.

Central to the initiative are Link Workers, embedded within specialist organisations, who facilitate the coordination of referrals, integration between primary care and the FDSV sector, and service navigation for victim-survivors.

This poster will outline the ACT Pilot’s key components, participant cohorts and benefits, and present interim evaluation findings showing early indicators of strengthened primary care readiness to recognise and respond to FDSV, alongside emerging collaboration between the primary care and FDSV sectors to enhance support for victim-survivors.

Acknowledgements:
- Stacy Leavens, Capital Health Network’s Chief Executive Officer
- Dr Suman Shetty, Capital Health Network’s Family Safety Program Manager
- Key service partners and stakeholders involved and engaged in the design of the FDSV Pilot Program

Brain injury (BI) is a common, but often unrecognised, consequence of intimate partner violence (IPV) which can be caused by a range of injuries, including blows to the head, non-fatal strangulation, and violent shaking. It is well established that both IPV and BI are independently associated with increased risk of a range of poor mental health outcomes, including PTSD/complex PTSD and poorer quality of life (QOL). But what happens when someone experiences both the physiological trauma of BI and the psychological trauma of IPV? Part of a larger project run by Monash University and UTAS, this study explores how BI that occurs within IPV (IPV-BI) impacts CPTSD symptoms (categorised as PTSD symptoms and Disturbances in Self Organisation [DSO]), and mental and physical quality of life (QOL). A total of 106 women with a history of IPV were grouped according to their experience of BI in IPV and completed a range of assessments including measures of IPV and BI history, CPTSD symptoms and QOL. IPV-BI was categorised by frequency (0, 1-3, >3 injuries) and severity (IPV without BI, IPV-BI without loss of consciousness [LOC], IPV-BI with LOC). We found that more frequent (>3) and severe (IPV-BI with LOC) injuries were associated with greater PTSD symptom severity and poorer physical QOL. No associations were found between IPV-BI and DSO symptom or mental QOL. These findings show that when someone experiences BI within IPV, this has a direct impact on symptoms, and that the combined physical trauma and relational trauma of IPV-BI may contribute differentially to dimensions of CPTSD symptoms and QOL. The clinical and psychosocial implications of this will be discussed.

Effective primary prevention must be grounded in local realities, particularly in rural and small-town contexts where rates of gender-based violence are often higher and social dynamics, service access, and community networks differ from urban centres. This session highlights a community–university partnership between Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence at the University of Calgary and three women’s shelter organizations in Alberta, Canada—YWCA Banff, Rowan House Society in High River, and Big Hill Haven in Cochrane. Together, this partnership demonstrates how women’s shelters and communities can use local data to better understand patterns of perpetration, engage key stakeholders, and design targeted, place-based strategies to stop violence before it starts. Drawing on applied research, presenters will share practical tools for translating police, shelter, and community data into meaningful action. Participants will explore how local and open access data can reveal trajectories of perpetration and identify critical windows for earlier intervention and prevention. The session will focus on a case study from Banff, Canada, where participants will examine how the tourism and hospitality sector can be engaged to address workforce dynamics, housing pressures, and broader social conditions that shape risk for violence. This example illustrates how place-based approaches can mobilize employers, community leaders, and service providers to shift environments and reduce harm. Participants will walk through the key features of the collaboration and the Banff case study, with built-in time for reflection and discussion to support real-world application. They will explore how to turn local data into action, engage cross-sector leaders, and implement community-driven strategies for primary prevention.