Family and domestic violence
Women’s Health Strategy and Programs (WHSP) maintains governance of the WA Health Family and Domestic Violence Policy (2014); Guidelines for Responding to Family and Domestic Violence 2014; and Reference Manual for Health Professionals Responding to Family and Domestic Violence (2014).
The Guidelines aim to provide health workers with an understanding of FDV, the impact it has on members of the family and the wider community, and to assist health workers to make safe and effective interventions with victims of violence and abuse, their children and other vulnerable people in the household. It sets out principles of screening for violence and abuse and of intervention and provides standard information applicable to health professionals and clinical settings.
WHSP also provides family and domestic violence (FDV) education and training for WA Health staff. The education and training program is for staff to assist with early identification, responding to and referrals for people experiencing FDV.
What is Family and Domestic Violence?
Family and domestic violence (FDV) is a pattern of ongoing, repetitive and purposeful use of physical, emotional, social, financial and/or sexual abuse used to intimidate and instil fear. Such behaviour enables the one person to control and have power over another person in an ‘intimate’ or family relationship.
It is behaviour which results in physical, sexual and/or psychological damage, forced social isolation, economic deprivation, or behaviour which causes the victim to live in fear. The term is usually used where abuse and violence take place in intimate partner relationships including same sex relationships, between siblings, from adolescents to parents or from family carers to a relative or a relative with a disability.
Key documents