Webinar: The power in understanding patterns of coercive control

Domestic and family violence service responses often place physical and sexual violence above other forms of abuse in terms of their risk and potential for harm. However, minimising the harm caused by non-physical forms of violence can have a negative effect on service responses for victim-survivors.

This webinar will explore ways that services can use the language of coercive control to support women to expose patterns of abusive behaviour. Specifically, it will:

• Describe coercive control and its prevalence in Australia
• Share one woman’s lived experience of coercive control
• Present practical strategies that support women to describe and expose patterns of controlling behaviour

This webinar will be of interest to professionals working in domestic and family violence, mental health, child protection and other social services.

This webinar is presented in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Australian Institute of Criminology.

Enquiries: rachel.pow@anrows.org.au

WATCH

Presenters

Hayley Boxall
Since joining the Australian Institute of Criminology 10 years ago, Hayley has published extensively in the areas of domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV) and child abuse and neglect, with a primary focus on the offending and reoffending patterns of DFSV offenders, the impact of natural disasters on DFSV, adolescent family violence and domestic violence desistance processes. She has also been involved in the evaluation of a range of government-funded programs, such as the Adolescent Family Violence Program, the ‘Preventing Violence against Women in our Community’ project and restorative justice approaches to DFSV. Hayley is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. Her thesis focuses on factors associated with domestic violence desistance processes.

Emma Rogers
Emma has 25 years of experience working in the social work field in Australia and the UK in the areas of Domestic and Family Violence (women’s refuges), Mental Health, Youth Homelessness, Asylum seeker support and Child Protection. Emma currently works for the Queensland Government Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women as a Regional Domestic and Family Violence Senior Practitioner. For the past three years she has developed and worked in the Walking with Dads Program – an innovative program that has a strong partnering foundation with mothers and children to create intervention for fathers, to hold them accountable and responsible for their destructive behaviours to increase safety and wellbeing for families. Emma is also a certified Safe & Together Trainer.

Jackie Wruck
Jackie Wruck is a proud Aboriginal Yindinji woman from Far North Queensland, Yarrabah region and Cultural Practice Advisor for at the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women in Queensland. Jackie’s own experience of domestic and family violence led her to becoming a certified Safe & Together trainer, and a facilitator and cultural advisor for the Walking with Dads program that works with, and walks with, fathers who have perpetrated violence in their families. Working with families all of her life, Jackie is a vocal advocate for families and passionate about keeping children out of the child protection system and making sure families’ voices are heard.

Heather Nancarrow
Dr Heather Nancarrow is the CEO of Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). For more than 35 years, Heather has worked to address violence against women, including in community services and advocacy, government policy and research. Heather is an adjunct associate professor at UNSW and an adjunct research fellow at the Griffith Criminology Institute, Griffith University. Her scholarship is focused on justice responses to violence against women, particularly as they relate to violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Heather’s book Unintended Consequences of Domestic Violence Law: Gendered Aspirations and Racialised Realities was published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan.