Thursday, 27 March 2008
Training to combat family violence on the ground in Indigenous communities
Efforts to arrest family violence in Indigenous communities will be significantly bolstered by new training for frontline community workers to be delivered by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma announced today.
Thirteen community legal education workers from as far afield as Port Augusta, Broome, Tennant Creek and Cape York are set to begin the intensive five-day training in Sydney today in a bid to support Indigenous communities in their attempts to prevent family violence.
“This training will strengthen the understanding and capacity of community leaders to help stop violence and sexual abuse in Indigenous communities,” Commissioner Calma said.
“We will be giving these community legal education workers the extra skills needed to raise awareness in local communities about the relationship between Australian law, customary law and human rights.
“At the end of the training these workers should be able to go back to local communities and into positions where they can work with elders, other agencies, the police and the legal profession to support existing violence prevention projects and develop new ones,” he said.
Mr Calma said the community legal education workers would be employed by Family Violence Prevention Legal Services and would focus on working with elders, women and young people and encourage them to speak out about family violence and to recognise its inconsistency with customary law, the Australian legal system and human rights.
Thirteen people will start the training, funded by the Indigenous Law and Justice Branch of the federal Attorney-General’s Department and contracted to HREOC to develop and deliver. The training is a key initiative of the Intergovernmental Summit on Violence and Child Abuse in Indigenous Communities agreed to by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) in July 2006.
“We hope this training will enable these workers to get out there on the ground and work directly with local schools and health clinics to promote and explain the rights and responsibilities they each have in combating the scourge of family violence in a way that is clear, culturally appropriate and relevant to the lives people are living,” Mr Calma said.
Media contact: Louise McDermott on (02) 9284 9851 or 0419 258 597
