E&OE TRANSCRIPT
SUBJECTS: Albanese Government’s early intervention for adolescent young men and boys to end gender-based violence
DAN COX, HOST: Prevention’s better than cure, you’ve heard that time and time again. Nowhere is that more important than when it comes to tackling domestic and family and sexual violence. Preventing it before it starts. The Federal Government's trialling an early intervention program, and one of the twelve sites will be in the Hunter region. Teenage boys at risk of becoming violent will be part of it. So, how will it work?
JENNY MARCHANT, HOST: Kate Thwaites is the Assistant Minister for Women. Good morning.
KATE THWAITES, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SECURITY, AGEING AND WOMEN: Good morning.
HOST: What will this program do?
THWAITES: Well, this is a program that will target young men and boys who are at risk of using family, domestic or sexual violence. And they may be people who themselves have experienced family violence. And so what we are doing is investing $23 million over three years to run trials in twelve sites right around the country, including in Newcastle, to really target early intervention with these young men and boys, helping to support them, to assist with both their recovery and healing from their experiences of family and domestic violence, and also helping them to avoid being perpetrators of family and domestic and sexual violence in the future. This is an area that historically we probably haven't done the amount of work in that we should have, targeting children and young people at risk of family violence. So, it is really important. And the twelve trials around the country will also help us look at what works in this space, what doesn't work in this space and what we want to take forward.
HOST: Is the program written and then handed to these twelve organisations, or are you asking the twelve to create it as they go?
THWAITES: We are asking the twelve to create it to work for their communities. Probably not so much create it as they go. These are all organisations who've tended to do this work and shown that they have the expertise, we believe, to really support young men and boys in this space.
HOST: But they could be twelve very different looking programs, depending on where you are in the country?
THWAITES: Yeah, that's right. The idea is to meet young men and boys where they are and provide them with support. That might include counselling, one on one counselling. It might include case management. For people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander background it will include culturally appropriate support. So, absolutely, the way that the programs will work will vary depending on the organisations and the site that they're in, but they will all be targeted at that group of young men and boys who have experienced family and domestic violence or who are at risk of using family, domestic or sexual violence in the future. And so it will be a really important piece of the broad range of work that our Government is doing to try. We've got a goal of ending family and sexual violence within a generation, and that's a really big goal. So, we do need to tackle it all the way from prevention to supporting victims. And this is part of the work we are doing to get to that goal.
HOST: How would a young person be recruited for these programs? Would they be referred through a school or a justice program or a counsellor? How would you get involved in it?
THWAITES: Yes, in most cases young people will be referred into that program and that may be through school, it may be through a health service or a family support service that they're already involved in. They'll be able to refer them on to this program for them to be supported through it. Really putting, as I said, that focus on young boys and men that we haven't had in this type of targeted way before, and that will be really important, not just for them, obviously, but for our communities as a whole.
HOST: Minister, that makes me think of all the people in a person's life who might see that they could be heading down a dangerous path and would like to help and change that where they can. What happens now if somebody is identified to be potentially at risk of engaging in that kind of behaviour?
THWAITES: Absolutely. We obviously do have existing support services that do currently work with young men and boys. What we haven't had in the same way is a very targeted early intervention program like this one, or there's been some patchier ones, rather than this coordinated trial around the country to really put the weight of evidence behind what works and what doesn't work. But of course, we have existing services that are there to support people who are experiencing or at risk of experiencing domestic, family or sexual violence. 1800RESPECT is always there. And, you know, for men, there are existing services. The men's referrals service is there as well. So, there are existing services, but this will complement them and obviously really focus on that group of young men and boys giving them support if they're victims of family and domestic violence, and also doing that important work of helping them make the choices that mean they are not going to be perpetrators of family and domestic violence.
HOST: And, Minister, how will you know if these twelve sites are effective?
THWAITES: There'll be a rigorous evaluation of this program across the twelve sites and that will feed into what happens next with this program. So, this is $23 million over three years for this trial. It will be really important in helping us build that evidence base about what works, what doesn't work, what we do take forward from there. And as I said, it is part of a much broader suite of work because this is so important. And I know for people in Newcastle, and I know for people right around the country, I talk to people and they say to me, this is terrible. We do not want this in our communities. How are we stopping it. So, this is part of that broader work, the $3.4 billion we've got against our national plan to end domestic and family violence. And this is an important part of that.
HOST: Thanks for explaining more about these trials, and I hope we'll get the chance to talk again soon.
THWAITES: Thanks for having me.