Each part of this prevention system must be adequately resourced to effectively work together to keep people safe.
Primary prevention
Primary prevention is about stopping violence before it starts by changing the conditions that allow it to happen in the first place. It refers to the actions we can all take to recognise the ideas that support, excuse and justify people using violence – and change them so that violence no longer feels like a choice for people to make.
Examples of primary prevention include:
- respectful relationships education in schools
- parenting programs that challenge harmful gender stereotypes
- consent education campaigns
- reforms to close the gender pay gap.
Learn more about primary prevention.
Respect Victoria
Our remit at Respect Victoria is in primary prevention of violence. Learn more about our primary prevention work.
Early intervention
Early intervention (also called ‘secondary prevention’) refers to working with those most at risk for perpetrating or experiencing violence, to prevent violence from starting and to support people to stop using violence.
People might be considered at risk if they have attitudes that support or excuse family violence, agree with harmful ideas about ‘what it means to be a man’, or have used or experienced family violence previously.
Primary prevention and early intervention work together by unwinding the harmful attitudes held by people who use violence and helping them to take responsibility for their choices and learn new behaviours.
Examples of early intervention include:
- programs for men and boys who are at risk of using violence that help them to change their beliefs about relationships and masculinity and learn how they can have healthy relationships
- information, resources and training about what violence really looks like, and what support services are available
Crisis response
Crisis response (also called ‘tertiary prevention’) refers to supporting victim survivors of violence and making sure people who’ve used violence are held accountable for their actions. Crisis response aims to stop violence from recurring and reduce the impacts of violence on the person experiencing it.
Examples of crisis response include:
- housing for victim survivors
- justice system responses for the person using violence
- financial and legal support for victim survivors
- counselling services and men’s behaviour change programs.
Primary prevention and early intervention support crisis response by educating people experiencing violence and the people tasked with helping them (e.g. first responders, health care workers or family violence workers) that victim survivors are not to blame for the violence they are experiencing, and it’s not their responsibility to make the violence stop.
Crisis response often needs to move quickly to protect someone from immediate risk or harm. Crisis response systems can keep people who have experienced violence safe by:
- believing their experience, and not dismissing or minimising them
- holding people who use violence accountable for their actions.
When violence is prevented from happening in the first place or happening again, it lessens the load on the system responding to violence.
Recovery and healing
Recovery and healing are about helping people to find safety, health and wellbeing following violence. Recovery from violence can be supported through long-term, holistic therapeutic services that focus on victim survivors’ psychological and physical healing and help them cope with the ongoing impacts of trauma.
Examples of recovery include ensuring access to:
- secure housing
- financial support
- safe engagement in the workforce
- non-clinical wellbeing supports, like connection to community and exercise.
Recovery is often a very long process for victim survivors, particularly if the person who used violence against them is still in their life, or they have experienced multiple instances or forms of violence.
People who have experienced violence report that understanding how violence happens and that it can happen to anyone, is an important part of their recovery. Primary prevention supports this by helping victim survivors understand that they were not responsible for the abuse or for changing the behaviour of the person who used violence.
Recovery can also include supports for people who have used violence to take accountability for and address their harmful behaviours. Victim survivors report that people who use violence taking accountability for their actions is an important part of their healing and recovery process. Primary prevention supports this by helping people consider how harmful beliefs about gender and what it means to be a man have driven their use of violence, and how they can change these beliefs and behaviours.