MARIBYRNONG City Council is placed favourably on the world stage when it comes to tackling domestic violence issues.
Council’s health promotion officer Georgie Hill last Tuesday released a report of her visit to the World Urban Forum in Vancouver, Canada.
The forum was attended by about 10,000 people from 100 countries.
“In terms of Maribyrnong’s commitment on a global scale – there aren’t many local government areas that are really taking a lead on family violence prevention initiatives.
“I think that is where we are kind of really leading the way,” she said.
Ms Hill’s attendance at the World Urban Forum was as a result of the council’s participation in the Gender Local Governance and Violence Prevention project.
The council is one of four in Victoria to take part in the initiative, which aims to collect information that can be shared nationally and internationally on domestic violence prevention.
Ms Hill said that as part of the project the council will undertake an audit of its community services.
The audit will enable the council to see how it can best approach the issue of family violence, in a way that will be unique to the council.
“We haven’t actually started the audit yet we are hoping to start it in the next couple of months,” she said.
“We’ll look at the policy that we have within local government, things like our municipal public health plan, communities plan, the council plan and all of our strategic programs and documents.”
Ms Hill said an example of a unique council initiative was the use of buses as safe havens for women in Charlottetown, Canada.
The buses were council-owned and operated and bus drivers were trained to assist women who were in domestic violence situations.
“They establish these safe havens for women so if there was a woman who needed support, the bus drivers would actually assist them and provide them with links to support networks,” she said.
“Also if a woman got on a bus and was feeling a bit unsafe, the bus driver would ask where she wanted to get off and stop in between stops so it was closer to her house.”
Ms Hill said workshops would be held early next year with council, providers of domestic violence programs and survivors of family violence.
The workshops would look at how best the council can tackle domestic violence issues.
The council began participating in the Gender Local Governance and Violence Prevention project earlier this year. It is a three-year project.
The second year should result in an integrated violence prevention program and a “how to” manual for other local councils to base their violence prevention programs on.
The manuals should be distributed to the community in the final leg of the project.
At present Wyndham and Darebin councils already have family violence action plans.
