Rethinking Family Safety Services for All Victorians
The Victorian government has a vision to eradicate family violence, where children thrive in safe, supportive families and where gender equality prevails. However, a stark truth emerged through the Royal Commission into Family Violence—a need for comprehensive sector-wide reform in response to systemic shortcomings in the government's approach.
THE CHALLENGEA Sector-Wide Vision
In 2019, the Department of Premier and Cabinet took a resolute step toward creating a unified, systematic approach to planning, designing, and delivering family safety services to offer seamless and optimised survivor experiences and outcomes.
The vision was clear:
Family safety services needed to adapt to individual needs.
A systematic, enduring sector-wide approach was essential.
FromHereOn embraced a human-centred design approach, rallying policy, service delivery, and systems experts from eight agencies to bring together:
A holistic view of the entire family safety service sector.
A customer-driven vision, service architecture, and roadmap for sector-wide investment.
An approach for planning, designing, and delivering customer-centric solutions.
An operating and governance model for mobilising cross-sector expertise in the fight against family violence.
This approach ensured direct alignment between the government's family safety goals, customer experiences, resource allocation, envisioned service improvements, and the necessary work streams to enact change.
THE SOLUTIONEmpowering Change Through Co-Design
THE IMPACTThe project unfolded through an end-to-end human-centred design methodology that put people at the core of every phase:
Sixty co-design champions from eight agencies joined forces to share insights into the family safety sector's current state.
Future state service concepts were defined, addressing deficiencies in individual customer journeys.
A comprehensive view of customer service interactions uncovered the need for holistic sector-wide interventions.
Principles of integration for cross-sector collaboration, customer-centricity, and localised services into a future state operating and governance model.
This project delivered a sustainable, scalable approach to ongoing family safety reforms. We delivered:
A clear view of end-to-end customer experiences, sector-wide service portfolios, and an effective operating model.
A comprehensive practice model encompassing organisational structures, processes, services, and engagement approaches.
A sector-wide governance model to steer strategy, investment, and implementation.
An implementation plan to mobilise capability and governance, cater to intersectional communities, and design and deliver sector-wide service concepts.
The rich engagement across sectors yielded powerful insights and outcomes and fostered a highly capable and motivated cohort of family safety specialists. This spirit of support and urgency for integrated cross-sectoral reform in family safety service delivery holds the potential for lasting change.