Webinar:
Strengthening capacity for multicultural and settlement services to support women experiencing violence.

Multicultural and settlement services provide a wide range of supports and programs to newly arrived migrants and refugees, and people from multicultural communities who are settled in Australia. These services regularly receive disclosures of, or otherwise become aware of domestic and family violence.

This webinar will unpack new ANROWS research, ‘Multicultural and settlement services supporting women experiencing violence: The MuSeS project’.  The expert panel of researchers and practitioners will discuss:

• how multicultural and settlement services regularly encounter and respond to clients who are experiencing violence
• the strengths and constraints impacting service provision
• key recommendations of the research for policy and practice.

There will also be a live Q&A.

This webinar is designed for practitioners and policymakers working within refugee, migrant and settlement services; and domestic and family violence services.

Attending this webinar earns 1 Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) continuing professional development (CPD) point.

Enquiries: rachel.pow@anrows.org.au

WATCH

Presenters

Associate Professor Cathy Vaughan

Cathy Vaughan is an Associate Professor at University of Melbourne and led the research ‘Multicultural and settlement services supporting women experiencing violence: The MuSeS project’. Currently Cathy leads the Australian arm of a multi-country study on sexual and gender-based violence against refugees, and research on building the capacity of faith leaders to respond to violence against women. Cathy also co-leads the kNOwVAWdata course to strengthen capacity to measure violence against women in Asia and the Pacific, conducted by the University of Melbourne in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund. She is also the Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Women’s Health hosted by the University.

Dr Adele Murdolo

Adele Murdolo is the Executive Director at the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH), a national women’s health organisation run by and for migrant and refugee women. MCWH promotes migrant and refugee women’s health nationally and conducts gender equity and primary prevention of violence against women programs in multicultural communities. Adele is a co-investigator in the MuSeS project. Adele has a PhD in history and women’s studies and has expertise in feminist, intersectional approaches to violence against women and women’s health. She is also an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Health Equity at the University of Melbourne.

Daniela Follese

Daniela Follese is a Senior Social Worker at Refugee Health Service based in Adelaide, South Australia.  This is a statewide service which works primarily with newly arrived refugees.  Daniela has worked in the refugee sector since 1995.  Throughout her career Daniela has been part of various projects which have involved training, providing presentations and information sharing about refugee health and the impact of trauma on mental health.

Xavier Lane-Mullins

Xavier Lane-Mullins is coordinator of the Bicultural Community Health Program with Australian Red Cross in Tasmania. This statewide program is funded by Tasmania’s Department of Health. Xavier’s team includes a pool of 16 Bi Cultural Health Workers whose role is to improve health literacy amongst communities from refugee background.  They do this in partnership with health sector professionals. Xavier is a champion of adoption of the Bi Cultural Worker model in all sectors. The team was involved in the ASPIRE report with ANROWS and has attracted more funding to both our work with people affected by modern slavery and in a community violence prevention project called Peaceful Pathways.

Fatemeh Ebrahimi

Fatemeh Ebrahimi is a Bicultural Worker in the Bicultural Community Health Program at Australian Red Cross in Tasmania. Fatemeh is part of the Hazara and Afghan Hazara communities of Afghanistan.  Fatemeh is multilingual and speaks Farsi, Dari and Hazargi.  In her role at Red Cross, she supports multicultural clients who speak these languages on health related issues.

Fatemeh is passionate about her community and driven to provide them with help and support. Fatemeh believes is standing for women’s rights by referring them to Redcross and other resources for further assistance.

Facilitator

Dr Virginia Mapedzahama

Dr Virginia Mapedzahama (PhD Sociology) has 18 years of experience researching diversity, difference and social cohesion – in particular, lived experiences of diversity in Australia. Her research focuses on understanding the social construction of all categories of difference:  meanings attached to this difference, how it is signified and lived, as well as its implications for those assigned difference. She explores this interest in the context of subjective experiences of migration, diaspora, blackness, race, racism and ethnicity, sexuality and gendered violence. Her expertise includes new African diaspora in Australia, race and ethnicity, cross-cultural identities, black subjectivities, hybridity, African feminisms, African women diaspora and intersectionality. She currently works for ANROWS as a Senior Research Officer