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Research

Our research

Violence against women and children affects everybody. It impacts on the health, wellbeing and safety of a significant proportion of Australians throughout all states and territories and places an enormous burden on the nation’s economy across family and community services, health and hospitals, income-support and criminal justice systems.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

News and events

ANROWS hosts events as part of its knowledge transfer and exchange work, including public lectures, workshops and research launches. Details of upcoming ANROWS activities and news are available from the list on the right.

ANROWS

About ANROWS

ANROWS was established by the Commonwealth and all state and territory governments of Australia to produce, disseminate and assist in applying evidence for policy and practice addressing violence against women and children.

KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER

Resources

To support the take-up of evidence, ANROWS offers a range of resources developed from research to support practitioners and policy-makers in delivering evidence-based interventions.


Evaluation of the Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre (WAGEC) Counselling Project

Completed
December 2022

The Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre (WAGEC) provides emergency and medium-term accommodation and support services to families, women and children experiencing or at risk of homelessness and/or domestic and family violence.


Many of WAGEC’s clients experience difficulties accessing community-based psychological and counselling services, in particular the women and children from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds whose access to such services is impacted by their precarious visa status.

To address this issue, WAGEC obtained funding to set up and implement its own psychological and counselling service for children, adolescents and adults. ANROWS worked with WAGEC to evaluate the service.

 

Research aim/s

The evaluation focused on the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, sustainability and management of the service, as well as the potential to scale up the model.

Methods

The evaluation used document analysis, surveys and interviews as its main data sources. Feedback forms were completed by clients using the service, the counsellors collected data on referral needs, and a sample of clients was interviewed concerning their experiences accessing the service and its impact on their lives.

 

Significance

The evaluation demonstrated the efficacy of the model for improving women’s and children’s access to psychological and counselling services. The evaluation also showed the relevance of the model to other service providers whose clients lack access to mainstream services.


Researchers

Evaluation team

Dr Peter Ninnes, Evaluation Manager, ANROWS

Katie Young, Clinical Governance Manager, WAGEC

Rebecca, Child and Young Person Psychologist, WAGEC

Lauren Hamilton, Evaluation and Partnership Manager, ANROWS

Tamsin Angus-Leppan, Research Officer, ANROWS

Celeste Koens, Research Officer, ANROWS

Dr Tran Nguyen, Project Officer, ANROWS

Alimadad Rasoli, Project Officer, ANROWS

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