Better practice in responding to family violence

Customers will receive more consistent responses when staff members are clear about what is expected of them. All staff members should understand:

• the nature of family violence
• the organisation’s family violence policies
• their responsibilities relevant to their individual role.

Information about the organisation’s response to family violence must be clear to employees. In this way staff will feel confident and better able to efficiently and effectively assist customers affected by family violence. Customers will benefit from a more efficient and less stressful process. The risk of staff experiencing vicarious trauma can also be reduced.

City West Water ensures all its employees who work with customers affected by family violence, have ongoing training, supporting processes and the required knowledge. This is so they can identify and appropriately respond to customers affected by family violence in accordance with its family violence policy.

North East Water trained its frontline staff on the support options available to its customers and what they expected of staff in responding to customers. This helped to create a clear and consistent response for customers affected by family violence. For Barwon Water, staff training was integral to staff understanding the limitations in their role in supporting customers. Staff at Yarra Valley Water sought further training on working with perpetrators of abuse so that they better understood their responsibilities.

Case study – North East Water

In its training to staff North East Water reiterated that while staff were expected to respond to customers affected by family violence they were not expected to be counsellors. The message to staff was that they may not be able to fix the situations being faced by their customers, but they could provide valuable information about referral services.

Case study – Barwon Water

Barwon Water’s customer centre staff refer customers that disclose family violence to its credit and hardship team. This specialist team may offer referrals to appropriate support organisations, however they noted the referrals are not always accepted. This team recognises the limitation of how they can support customers and leave it to the customer to decide what they will accept.

Case study – Yarra Valley Water

Yarra Valley Water’s WaterCare Support Team – who provide case management to customers affected by family violence – identified that while they were comfortable and confident working with victim-survivors, they needed additional skills and capability when engaging with those who use violence, as those calls were becoming a regularity.

Recognising that staff were not clear about how to respond to perpetrators, Yarra Valley Water engaged No to Violence to deliver tailored training to help staff understand their responsibilities. The training was a full day session that covered men’s behaviour change and how to respond safely and effectively when engaging with men who use violence.

The training has now been delivered to the WaterCare Support Team and other key people across Yarra Valley Water including people from performance and culture, and debt management teams. This initial training was extremely well received and provided these teams with additional skills that can be applied