Learning from Lives Lost: International Evidence and Australia’s Opportunity to Strengthen Domestic Violence Death Response
Tracks
Ballroom 1: In-Person & Online
| Tuesday, November 24, 2026 |
| 10:45 AM - 11:05 AM |
| Ballroom 1 |
Overview
Lucy Lord, The Red Rose Foundation
Three Key Learnings
1. Reframing the domestic violence death review as a prevention and systems learning mechanism, not a forum for blame.
2. Understanding why trauma-informed family involvement is critical both to learning and to compassionate post-fatality response.
3. Identifying practical opportunities for stronger national coordination, shared learning and better support for bereaved families across Australia.
Speaker
Ms Lucy Lord
Chief Executive Officer
The Red Rose Foundation
Learning from Lives Lost: International Evidence and Australia’s Opportunity to Strengthen Domestic Violence Death Response
Presentation Overview
Domestic violence-related deaths represent the most catastrophic failure of our prevention and response systems. Yet death review processes are too often misunderstood as forums for blame, rather than what they are intended to be: structured opportunities to learn, identify systemic gaps, strengthen accountability, and ultimately prevent future fatalities.
Drawing on international practice, including Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews in the UK and domestic violence fatality reviews in the United States, alongside family advocacy experience and current work in Australia supporting families bereaved by fatal domestic violence through the Red Rose Foundation, this presentation will explore how effective death review systems can drive prevention, improve systemic responses, and strengthen support in the aftermath of fatality.
Central to this discussion is the role of bereaved families. Families hold critical insight into patterns of coercive control, escalating risk, missed intervention opportunities and systemic blind spots that may not be visible through agency records alone. They also hold knowledge that never reached formal systems at all. Their involvement, where they choose it and in ways that are safe, supported and trauma-informed, is not simply compassionate practice; it is fundamental to meaningful learning and more complete understanding.
Equally, families should not be left to navigate coronial, justice, media and service systems alone in the aftermath of profound loss. While families do not recover from these deaths in any conventional sense, many describe learning to live within a new normal, and with the right support, finding moments of hope, meaning and even joy again.
The presentation will also examine opportunities to strengthen Australia’s domestic violence death review architecture, including more consistent approaches across jurisdictions, stronger national mechanisms for shared learning, and family-centred postvention responses that ensure those left behind are supported, while the lessons from fatality are translated into practical prevention action.
Drawing on international practice, including Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews in the UK and domestic violence fatality reviews in the United States, alongside family advocacy experience and current work in Australia supporting families bereaved by fatal domestic violence through the Red Rose Foundation, this presentation will explore how effective death review systems can drive prevention, improve systemic responses, and strengthen support in the aftermath of fatality.
Central to this discussion is the role of bereaved families. Families hold critical insight into patterns of coercive control, escalating risk, missed intervention opportunities and systemic blind spots that may not be visible through agency records alone. They also hold knowledge that never reached formal systems at all. Their involvement, where they choose it and in ways that are safe, supported and trauma-informed, is not simply compassionate practice; it is fundamental to meaningful learning and more complete understanding.
Equally, families should not be left to navigate coronial, justice, media and service systems alone in the aftermath of profound loss. While families do not recover from these deaths in any conventional sense, many describe learning to live within a new normal, and with the right support, finding moments of hope, meaning and even joy again.
The presentation will also examine opportunities to strengthen Australia’s domestic violence death review architecture, including more consistent approaches across jurisdictions, stronger national mechanisms for shared learning, and family-centred postvention responses that ensure those left behind are supported, while the lessons from fatality are translated into practical prevention action.
Biography
Lucy Lord is Chief Executive Officer of the Red Rose Foundation with 20 years’ experience in domestic abuse and violence against women and girls policy, practice and systems reform across the UK and Australia. Lucy is a UK-Home-Office-accredited Domestic Abuse Related Death Review Chair and worked with Advocacy-After-Fatal-Domestic-Abuse, supporting families bereaved by domestic violence and contributing to system reform. In Australia, she advocates to strengthen domestic-violence-death-review processes and bereaved family support responses. Lucy recently co-authored a chapter in the forthcoming The Palgrave Handbook on Domestic Homicides and Death Reviews on the importance of involving families in death review processes.
