Deadly Lovin’ - Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency

Program description  

The Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency’s (VACCA’s) Deadly Lovin’ program was designed and developed as a healthy respectful relationships training package for professionals working with Aboriginal young people aged 12–17 years. Developed between 2021–23, Deadly Lovin’ is delivered as a train-the-trainer package to equip youth and family practitioners with the tools, resources and confidence to facilitate yarns and workshops about ‘deadly’ relationships with young mob (189).  

The program aims to reduce the overrepresentation of Aboriginal communities in the cycle of family violence by helping young people understand consent, healthy boundaries and what respectful relationships look like.  

Through culturally safe activities and advice, the program meets young people where they are and draws upon cultural strengths to build a sense of pride and empowerment. This often takes place in peer learning environments such as camps, therapeutic groupwork or classroom settings, to support open learning, promote insight sharing and reinforce program content.  

The program has received multiple short-term funding cycles, at various times supported by state, philanthropic and now federal funding, to ensure that the program has adequate resourcing to run.  

Insights

Many of the young people supported at VACCA are in out-of-home care, meaning they are at increased risk of experiencing family violence as they grow into their adult years. Compounding this is the high correlation between being in out-of-home care and chronic absenteeism within schools. This means that many young people connected to VACCA don’t receive the same information about healthy respectful relationships as their peers who live at home and regularly attend school. 

Staff trained in the Deadly Lovin’ program have shared stories about their experiences delivering the package to the young people they support. These stories include supporting young people to navigate unhealthy intimate partner relationships and find pathways to safety, and supporting young people who have disclosed historical abuse to access support. These are tangible positive impacts for young people who are facing real problems navigating relationships while having limited access to prevention initiatives.