Orange Door combats family violence

PREMIER Daniel Andrews joined hub practitioners and community members in Geelong on August 17 to launch The Orange Door, the new name for the support and safety hubs, and major feature of the Labor government’s reform on family violence services.

Geelong joins a list of new support and safety hubs in Victoria, as the Andrews Government works to protect women and children from violence and make it easier for families to access support.

The Orange Door is a fundamentally new approach of supporting women and children affected by family violence; it dramatically changes the way government delivers services and provides a visible contact point for victim survivors with access to highly-skilled workers and their connections to the justice, housing and social services.

The Orange Door also incorporates the existing ChildFIRST service to better connect families needing support with the care, wellbeing and development of children to the services they need.

Thanks to changes in laws around information sharing, workers at The Orange Door also benefit from the removal of barriers that prevented information about perpetrators from being shared effectively – something that has previously led to catastrophic consequences.

The hubs were a key recommendation of the landmark Royal Commission into Family Violence, with The Orange Door now operating in four areas – Bayside Peninsula, Barwon, Mallee and North Eastern Melbourne; operations are set to commence in inner Gippsland later this year.

By 2021, The Orange Door will be operating across all 17 Victorian Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) areas, with the locations of the next tranche of hubs set to be announced in coming months.

The Victorian Budget 2017/18 invested $448.1 million to establish the 17 support and safety hubs across the state, forming part of the Labor government’s record $2.6 billion investment in family violence services.

Mr Andrews said thanks to The Orange Door families will be able to get the support they need to stay safe.

“We will never stop our work to end our nation’s number one law and order issue – family violence – putting the interests of women and children first. This is about saving lives and holding perpetrators to account.”

Minister for Police and Member for Bellarine Lisa Neville said family violence is their number one law and order issue and this service ensures families get the support they need to “stay safe” and “get back on their feet”, while holding perpetrators accountable for their actions.

For more information, go to vic.gov.au/familyviolence/the-orange-door.html.