Opportunities to strengthen focus on primary prevention in renewed plans

Stronger integration between family, domestic and sexual violence frameworks and renewed disability and autism plans

Violence against people with disability should not be addressed as a separate or peripheral issue but recognised as central to the success of Victoria’s whole-of-government violence prevention reforms.

The renewed plans provide an important opportunity to strengthen alignment between disability reforms and Victoria’s broader family, domestic and sexual violence prevention, response, early intervention and recovery and healing systems.

Respect Victoria commends the Victorian Government’s commitment to addressing gendered violence through dedicated frameworks such as the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032, Free from Violence: Victoria’s strategy to prevent family violence and Until Every Victorian Is Safe: Third rolling action plan to end family and sexual violence 2025 to 2027. While these frameworks include commitment and targeted actions to address violence against women with disability, their effectiveness relies on other areas of government actively aligning and reinforcing their objectives. While disability policy and family violence reform have increasingly intersected over recent years, there remain further opportunities to deepen coordination and alignment between government systems, frameworks and policy responses. 

To be most effective, a primary prevention approach requires strong integration between disability policy, family violence reform, gender equality policy and broader whole of-population prevention strategies. The gendered and ableist drivers of violence against women and girls with disability are deeply interconnected and must be addressed simultaneously.  

Addressing the gendered and ableist drivers of violence against women and gender diverse people with disability not only creates an environment where everyone is safe, equal and respected but also creates greater outcomes and opportunities for participation, autonomy and inclusion for people with disability more broadly.

“Addressing the drivers of violence is not only a means to ending violence against women and girls with disabilities but will help to build a society where women and girls with disabilities are valued and are able to fully realise their human rights on an equal basis with all other people”.

 – Our Watch & Women with Disabilities Victoria (12) 

Notably, disability systems themselves are critical settings for primary prevention. Disability frameworks, services and workforces that promote autonomy, inclusion and independent decision-making directly address the underlying drivers of violence against people with disability, particularly women and girls. Disability workforces play a key role in challenging the ableist norms and negative stereotypes that normalise violence, foster inclusion, and support people with disability to exercise choice and control. In addition, they also play an important role in recognising and responding to signs of violence (14).  

The Disability Royal Commission highlighted that violence experienced by people with disability often occurs in relationships and settings not traditionally captured within narrow definitions of family violence including support worker relationships, supported accommodation and institutional settings. Applying a primary prevention lens across government portfolios is essential to ensuring women and girls with disability can participate fully in society and access the same rights and opportunities afforded to all Victorians.  

There is significant experience and expertise across disability-led organisations in delivering initiatives and programs that address the underlying ableist and gendered drivers of violence against people with disability. Community-led approaches and leadership by and for people with disability are critical to ensuring the work is inclusive, relevant, meaningful and effective. Increasingly, disability community-led organisations and the mainstream primary prevention workforce are partnering to address violence against people with disability.  

The renewed plans should strengthen shared visibility and accountability across disability, education, health, justice and family violence systems to prevent violence against people with disability and autistic people. This is an opportunity to highlight the crucial role that disability systems and structures play as a setting for primary prevention.  

We have outlined the following opportunities to further embed a primary prevention focus within the upcoming plan renewals, including:

• violence prevention through supporting economic security for women, girls and gender diverse people with disability  
• disability systems and workforces as critical settings for the primary prevention of gendered violence
• accessible and inclusive respectful relationships and sexuality education for all people with disability, and their parents, carers and workforce
• supporting safe online experiences for people with disability  
• strengthened data and evaluation mechanisms.

Family Safety Victoria have previously funded Disability Practice Leads within Sexual and Family Violence Services who worked across case management and disability services and made significant inroads into improving knowledge of gendered drivers and carer abuse leading to better assessments by disability providers. Revisiting the merits of a state-wide roll-out of these important positions would be one way to support collaboration across sectors, bolstering outcomes for women, girls and gender diverse people with disability and playing an important tertiary prevention role.

Disability systems as violence prevention infrastructure

Primary prevention of violence against people with disability should be embedded and operationalised through the systems, institutions and services that shape everyday life. Disability services, education settings, housing services, healthcare systems, justice systems, workplaces and community organisations play a crucial role in upholding the autonomy, participation, inclusion and safety of the people with disability who interact with these services and systems. As such, these systems and workforces are critical infrastructure and settings for preventing, recognising and responding to violence.

The current Victorian State Disability Plan includes important commitments to safeguarding and strengthening workforce capability. Continued focus is required to ensure disability systems and workforces are supported to understand and actively address the underlying drivers of violence against women and girls with disability.  

Disability workforces are uniquely positioned to contribute to the primary prevention of gendered violence through their practice and interactions. By challenging ableist assumptions and stereotypes, fostering inclusion, and supporting agency and decision making, disability workers can address underlying drivers of violence. The ongoing nature of disability support can also create opportunities to model consent, respect for autonomy, challenge harmful attitudes about disability, and reinforce violence prevention messages and methods. Disability workers operate across home, community and institutional settings and are often well placed to recognise early signs of violence, including coercive control, reproductive coercion and physical abuse, and connect people to appropriate supports.  

‘No More Excuses’ – Primary Prevention of Violence Against Women with Disability, prepared by the University of Melbourne on behalf of Respect Victoria, identified disability support workers and organisations as a priority setting for primary prevention. Women with disability interviewed for this research identified paid support workers as particularly important in actively addressing the ableist and gendered drivers of violence, as we all as preventing violence by other workers and in early identification of violence from other perpetrators, such as intimate partners and family members.  

Disability systems should actively embed the promotion of independence, agency and participation of women, girls and gender diverse people with disability into how services are designed and delivered. In practice, this means enabling participation in leadership and decision making within services, implementing supported decision-making processes, and ensuring rights-based and trauma-informed practice across the workforce. Accessible complaints and reporting mechanisms are also essential to enable women, girls and gender diverse people with disability to safely raise concerns for their safety.  

The renewed plans should strengthen disability systems as key prevention infrastructure. This includes continued investment in workforce development across disability, health, justice, police, community services and prevention sectors to build a shared understanding of the intersecting drivers of violence against women, girls and gender diverse people with disability, and strengthen capacity to prevent, recognise and respond. The plans should also strengthen partnerships between prevention, disability, sexual assault and prevention sectors to support sustained cross-sector capability building and integrated approaches.  

In addition, there is an opportunity to embed a primary prevention lens in the current commitment to ‘increase police workforce capability to better serve people with disability’ by providing Victoria Police personnel with knowledge and skills required to improve interactions and outcomes for people with disability experiencing violence.

Any steps towards building capacity of disability workforces must involve specialist organisations led by people with disabilities. Women with Disabilities Victoria, the peak body for women and gender diverse people with disabilities, is the primary stakeholder in building capacity of organisations to address the intersections of disability and gender through the development of practical skills, strengthened networks, tailored support and consultation.

The Gender and Disability Workforce Development Program, delivered by Women with Disabilities Victoria, provides a foundation for this work, and Our Watch’s Growing with change: Developing an expert workforce to prevent violence against women offers further guidance for government action across these overlapping workforces. 

Inclusive and accessible Respectful Relationships, sexuality, consent and reproductive health education

Everyone has the right to safe, respectful and equal relationships.  

As highlighted by the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032, education and awareness raising on respectful relationships including sexual and reproductive health, provide a crucial prevention platform for promoting equality, bodily autonomy and safe relationships.

The Disability Royal Commission’s Rapid Evidence Review: Violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of people with disability found that people with disability are at particularly high risk of experiencing violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation, particularly when they have not received adequate information and support to make autonomous decisions about their sexual and reproductive health and identify and recognise harmful behaviours and where to seek support. Women and gender diverse people with disability face heightened risk of reproductive coercion including pressure, manipulation and deception to make particular choices about their own reproductive health (31).

Access to sexual and reproductive health information, services and support are crucial to uphold the human rights of people with disability to make autonomous choices about their own sexuality, reproductive health and relationships. Not providing this education risks leaving people more vulnerable to abuse, coercion and exploitation (18). 

People with disability may be overlooked or excluded from prevention and sexual and reproductive health initiatives due to inaccessibility of the curriculum or education format, harmful assumptions and incorrect stereotypes that people with disability are not sexual, will not understand the content or do not need this information (19). Women with Disabilities Victoria emphasise the importance of integrating rights-based pleasure focused approaches to prevention and sexual and reproductive health education that acknowledges the rights of people with disabilities to seek and experience pleasure. This approach both challenges harmful narratives and strengthens pathways for women and gender diverse people with disabilities to access safe, pleasurable relationships and sexual experiences.  

To be inclusive and most effective, all forms of respectful relationships and sex education must be accessible, tailored and representative of the individual experiences, developmental stages and learning needs of all people (20, 21). Education must reflect the diversity of people with disability, such as LGBTIQA+ community members, neurodiverse people and people with specific communication needs. Best practice approaches are co-designed and at times peer-led with people with disability to ensure content is relevant, representative and accessible (20). When people with disability are involved in the design and delivery of these materials, the content is more likely to reflect and respond to different experiences of ableism and gender inequality and enable an intersectional and impactful approach.  

Respectful Relationships Initiative  

Schools and early childhood education play a critical role in creating a culture of respect and gender equality, tackling the attitudes and behaviours that can lead to family violence and gendered violence (20). Victoria’s Respectful Relationships Initiative supports education settings to promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours, and teaches children how to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence. The Victorian Government mandates the delivery of the Respectful Relationships whole-of-school approach in all government schools, including specialist schools, and encourages participation of Catholic and independent schools. The Victorian Curriculum provides the basis for teaching and learning about respectful relationships and identifies the knowledge, skills and understanding for students to be able to engage in respectful relationships. The Department of Education supports schools to deliver this curriculum through the optional Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships and Building Respectful Relationships teaching and learning materials.

The Respectful Relationships Evaluation 2019-21 found that the overall design of the Respectful Relationships initiative was working effectively, but there was significant variation in how schools across Victoria engaged, and barriers to implementation due to schools’ competing priorities, staff turnover and the effort required to maintain momentum and tailor delivery to different school contexts.

There are currently no consistent guidelines or resources for how Respectful Relationships and consent education content is adapted and delivered for students with disability and autistic students, which is consistent with other curriculum areas. In practice, adaptation and delivery is led by individual schools and teaching staff supported by the Respectful Relationships workforce to best meet the individual needs of students.  

Current approaches rely heavily on:

• teacher judgement to adapt mainstream resources  
• school-level adaptation
• supplementary specialist programs
• outsourced expertise to support adaption and/or delivery.  

In practice, teaching staff across mainstream and specialist schools invest considerable time to develop and deliver age and developmentally appropriate respectful relationships, sexuality and consent education. Standard respectful relationships messaging requires tailoring to suit the specific needs and experiences of students with disability. For example, mainstream consent frameworks, do often not reflect the reality for people with disability who rely on support workers for personal care. Autistic students in particular may find the implicit, non-verbal dimensions of consent, such as interpreting body language, difficult to navigate without tailored support.  

Practitioners have noted a particular gap for students with complex communication needs. In one example shared with Respect Victoria, a specialist sexual assault service was engaged to support a specialist school to develop a visual story resource, as there were no body safety or respectful relationships material for students with complex communication needs, including non-verbal students that communicate via Augmentative and Alternative Communication devices.  

Education staff across mainstream and specialist schools would benefit from continued support to ensure students with disability have equal access to the Respectful Relationships Initiative. This includes continued support and resourcing to adapt and tailor materials to the specific needs of their students. Sustained investment in professional learning is essential to support teachers to deliver content confidently and consistently across education settings.

The renewed plans should continue to support all Victorian government schools and participating Catholic and independent schools to implement and embed the Respectful Relationships Initiative – ensuring inclusive delivery for students with disability remains a central priority. Professional learning should equip teachers and school leaders with strategies to tailor delivery to the diverse learning needs of their students, including students with disability, autistic students, students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, LGBTIQA+ students, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students (20).

Not all people with disability will have access to respectful relationships and sexuality education in a school setting, and it is important that this education and support continues across adulthood. Some adults with disability may have gaps from their earlier education, while others may benefit from information suited to their current life or development stage.  

There are many best practice examples of this work in the community that can be strengthened and scaled, with a number of disability-led Victorian organisations providing specialist respectful relationships and sexuality education for people with disability in a range of settings.  

Broader community education and awareness raising must also reach those around people with disability, such as parents, carers and support professionals. Their attitudes, skills and confidence to continue conversations on healthy relationships and sexuality can play a key role in supporting people with disability to access information and make informed decisions (20)

Digital environment and preventing online harms

Digital environments increasingly shape societal norms, social connections, and identity formation. Online spaces offer an important space to access information, connection, support, play, entertainment, learning and employment. For many people with disability, technology and digital platforms are an essential tool for communication, social connection and access to disability, government and services information and support (22).  

While offering meaningful opportunities for innovation and connection, technology’s rapid advancement and proliferation have simultaneously created new pathways to perpetrate various forms of violence. Increasingly, technology is being used as a tool to facilitate violence both online and in-person (23).  

Consistent with broader patterns of domestic, family and sexual violence, experiences of technology-facilitated gendered violence (TFGBV) are gendered. Research demonstrates that women, girls and gender-diverse people are targeted at disproportionately higher rates than men, and men engage in perpetration at higher rates than women (24).  

Additionally, misogynistic content has grown across social media platforms, forming a significant component of the ‘manosphere’, a network of online communities that promote anti-feminism, misogyny, and hatred of queer communities, particularly trans and non-binary people. 

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner identifies people with disability as being at elevated risk of experiencing online harm (25). Research by the eSafety Commissioner exploring experiences of technology-facilitated abuse among women living with intellectual or cognitive disability found that women with disability can experience a range of technology-facilitated violence, including harassment, misuse of online accounts, monitoring via spyware and tracking devices, and image-based abuse. Perpetrators were most commonly partners, ex-partners but also included family members, carers and strangers. For women experiencing technology-facilitated abuse, there can be many barriers to accessing support, including fear of losing access to their devices or internet, reliance on the perpetrator for care, and not knowing where to access support (22).

Perpetrators may remove access to technology and digital platforms which can have significant impacts on autonomy, safety and wellbeing (22). Further, women have reported withdrawing from social media and other online spaces due to humiliation and fear of ongoing abuse (29), while teenage girls have reported limiting their online activity to reduce the chance of nude images being created of them in the first place (30).  

Like many young people, online platforms, such as social media, are often deeply embedded into the lives of young people with disability. Research by the eSafety Commissioner into the digital lives of young people with disability highlighted that young people with disabilities have embraced the internet, spending more time online than the national average of children and young people (26). For some, online environments can remove barriers and provide more equal access to opportunities, with 7 in 10 young people with disability reporting they find it easier to be themselves online than when they are with people face-to-face, compared to the national average of 6 in 10 (26). Given increased time online, young people with disability can experience elevated rates of online harm.

Almost 59 per cent of young people with disability reported they had been treated in a hurtful or nasty way online in the past 12 months, compared to the national average of 45 per cent (26). Young people with disability are also significantly more likely to be exposed to every major type of potential harmful content mentioned in the survey, including graphic violence and ways to self-harm or take their own life.  

People with disability have expressed a desire to learn about safer ways to use technology, including guidance in accessible formats and developing skills to use devices independently (22). Simultaneously, the primary prevention sector has been grappling with how to prevent gendered harms in online spaces, with many calling for a need for education and community awareness initiatives that strengthen digital literacy and understanding of online harms. This includes topics such as consent in digital environments, digital data privacy, digital rights and respectful digital relationships. Given the higher risk of exposure to online harms for people with disability, it is critical that digital education and awareness raising programs are co-designed and tailored to meet the specific needs of people with disability.  

Respect Victoria notes the commitment of the current Victorian State Disability plan to ‘strengthen digital accessibility for people with disability’. There is opportunity to build on this in the renewed plan through strengthening tailored and inclusive digital literacy and online safety awareness raising, education and skill development to support people with disability to have safe online experiences. This should encompass education and skills development on digital citizenship, online safety, consent education, online misogyny and exploitation, and education for parents and carers. Given the elevated risks outlined above, there is value in the renewed plans including initiatives tailored to young people with disability, women with cognitive and intellectual disabilities, autistic young people and other groups experiencing heightened vulnerability online. 

Prevention through economic security

Changing the landscape identifies social structures that segregate or isolate people with disability from community participation, education, employment or leadership as an ableist driver of violence against women and girls with disability.

Access to education and employment is fundamental to economic security, independence and social participation. However, women with disability continue to experience significantly lower rates of paid workforce participation due to the intersection of ableism, gender discrimination and systemic barriers to education, training and employment systems (15).  

Consequently, women with disability remain among the most economically disadvantaged groups in Australia, experiencing disproportionately higher rates of poverty, housing insecurity, workforce exclusion and financial dependence (16).  

Compounded by gender inequality, women with disability in particular, may experience heightened economic dependence on intimate partners, family members or carers, heightening vulnerability to violence and limiting pathways to safety. Economic insecurity, financial dependence and social isolation can reduce autonomy and create significant barriers to leaving harmful or violent environments or relationships (4).  

In addition, recent proposed reforms to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) may have implications on the economic security, independence and safety for many people with disability (17). In their submission to the NDIS Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026, the NDIS Reform Advisory Committee expressed concern to the Australian Parliament that where reforms reduce access to supports or increase barriers to obtaining necessary assistance, individuals may face increased reliance on family members, carers, or intimate partners to meet daily needs – thereby putting them at greater risk of violence or exploitation.

In this context, it will be important for the renewed plans to continue to prioritise access to education and skills development, safe housing, employment and economic participation, for people with disability as critical enablers of safety, autonomy and inclusion.  

This should include explicit recognition of economic inequality and dependency as structural drivers of violence against women and girls with disability, and embed a violence prevention lens across disability employment, housing, education and income support reform.

Disability policy can build awareness and support genuine economic participation and freedom, while recognising that economic security is a critical protective factor to prevent violence.  

Importantly, people with disability should not have to choose between accessing essential supports and being safe from violence. This includes ensuring that policy settings across the following areas reduce, rather than reinforce, the conditions that contribute to violence:  

• tailored employment conditions that support equal economic participation  
• supported employment arrangements
• appropriate income support
• accessible housing
• access to accessible transport  
• education participation
• digital inclusion.

Data, reporting and evaluation

While available data clearly shows that women, girls and gender diverse people with disability experience violence at significantly elevated rates, the true prevalence is likely underestimated due to inconsistent definitions of disability, reliance on self-disclosure, fragmented data across service systems, limited intersectional data, under-identification, and systemic barriers to reporting (27).  

The Disability Royal Commission found that ‘there is no one source of data to identify people with disability and their experiences of violence, abuse, neglect or exploitation’ (5, pg 7). At present, the Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey (PSS) is the only source of population-level data on the nature and extent of violence experienced by Australians. While this is an important data source, limitations have been raised which affect its ability to fully capture the experiences of people with disability. For example, it is conducted only in private dwellings, can be inaccessible to people with significant communication difficulties, records only male and female gender, and does not capture data on First Nations peoples (5). Additionally, because the disability is identified at the time of the survey, it is not possible to determine whether the person had a disability when the violence occurred (5).  

Strengthened data collection and reporting mechanisms would support better understanding of the prevalence, nature and forms of violence perpetrated against women, girls and gender diverse people with disabilities in all settings. ‘Maintain the Momentum’, Respect Victoria’s three yearly report to Parliament on the progress of prevention, identified building evidence and data as a key priority in strengthening and building a better approach to primary prevention in Victoria. 

‘Research, monitoring and evaluation are essential to understanding the prevalence, trends, drivers and reinforcing factors of different forms of violence. Such evidence shows the magnitude of problems related to family violence, gendered violence and all forms of violence against women, the opportunities for intervention and how best to measure the effectiveness and impact of such interventions.’ 

– Respect Victoria

A lack of complete, consistent and disaggregated data can undermine effective design and implementation of primary prevention initiatives. Strengthened data collection methods and reporting will inform a stronger understanding of the prevalence and drivers of violence against people with disability, and in turn support stronger policies, programs and outcomes. Data that is disaggregated by disability type, gender and other demographic factors is particularly important to capture intersectional experiences, including those of people who have acquired a disability as a result of violence (28).  

Respect Victoria notes the prioritisation of ‘effective data and outcomes reporting’ in the current Victorian State Disability Plan. It is important that this is continued, with opportunities for an increased focus on strengthening mechanisms to collect and report gender and disability disaggregated data about all forms of violence experience by people with disability. This will better inform evidence-based violence prevention policy and programs, enable more accountable outcomes reporting, and ensure prevention initiatives are tailored to the needs of individuals. Dedicated resourcing for the evaluation of primary prevention initiatives has also been highlighted in Maintain the Momentum as essential. By strengthening the evidence base and building our understanding of impact and outcomes, we can continue to improve primary prevention programs and work towards a future free from violence against people with disability.