Respect Victoria acknowledges Aboriginal peoples throughout Victoria as the First Peoples and Traditional Owners and Custodians of the lands and waterways on which we rely. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present. We proudly acknowledge Aboriginal communities throughout Victoria and their ongoing strength in practising the world’s oldest living cultures.
We acknowledge the significant and ongoing impacts of colonisation and commit to working alongside First Nations communities to effect change. We recognise the ongoing leadership role of these communities in addressing and preventing family violence and violence against women, and will continue to work in collaboration with First Peoples to eliminate these forms of violence from all communities.
Respect Victoria acknowledges the significant impact of family violence and violence against women on individuals, families and communities, and the strength and resilience of the children, young people and adults who have, and are still, experiencing this violence. We pay our respects to those who did not survive and to their loved ones.
Respect Victoria would like to thank the many individuals, organisations, services, local government, businesses, sports clubs, schools and community members who have so generously offered their time, expertise and passion to this initiative.
Respect Victoria welcomes any comments, questions or requests for meetings and presentations about Respect Ballarat. Please get in touch with us at practice@respectvictoria.vic.gov.au. You can also subscribe to our Ballarat mailing list for updates.
To receive this document in another format, email contact@respectvictoria.vic.gov.au.
While place-based models are not new to Australia, Respect Ballarat is the first of its kind in terms of size, scale, and scope.
The aim of the model is clear: to ensure that every touchpoint in a person’s daily life reinforces the core values, attitudes, and behaviours that reject the drivers of violence and help create a safe and equal Ballarat.
Work to prevent gendered violence in Ballarat has been happening for many decades, led by women’s health organisations, family violence services, local government, workplaces and community organisations. The model will build on this, and support the whole community to come together, reflect, learn and take action.
Just over a year ago, Ballarat took to the streets in a powerful, emotional protest against gendered violence and the devastating deaths of three local women: Samantha Murphy, Rebecca Young and Hannah McGuire.
These events in 2024 left almost no one in Ballarat untouched. Grief rippled through workplaces, school playgrounds and places of worship. Many people, particularly women, felt unsafe — on a morning run, walking the streets, in their own home. When tragedy strikes a community, it touches every facet and threatens to embed into its fabric for generations.
Like many Australian towns, historically Ballarat has had some experience with tragedy. This includes the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their communities and families and a history of institutional abuse. The 2013 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse revealed that Ballarat was home to some of the most appalling abuse in Australia.
To this day, ribbons tied to the fences of those same institutions flutter in the wind as reminders.
What is a community saturation model?
A saturation model is a place-based, community-led approach to preventing gendered violence. It focuses on ‘saturating’ a local area so that all the different connections a person has – at home, school, work, online and in their community – reinforce the same messages, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that support a Ballarat where people are safe, equal and respected.
“The saturation model is a real call to action, deep engagement and strong reflection on what led to three women being [allegedly] murdered and the unabating experiences of intimate partner violence in our community. We are all having difficult and productive conversations and we’re determined to make this model work so that we can collectively change things for a much safer and healthier Ballarat in the future.”
— Ange Elson, Tiny Pride
Global evidence tells us that for a saturation model to work:
- it must be tailored to and led by local communities and sectors
- activities should happen at all levels of the socio-ecological model (individual, community, organisational, policy environment), and reinforce each other
- the family violence system must be appropriately resourced to ensure prevention and early intervention work can happen alongside violence response and recovery
- a ‘people-powered’ approach engaging local community members should be a central focus.
Respect Ballarat: A community model to prevent gendered violence
“Designing this model is an amazing opportunity for our community to write a different story about gendered violence in Ballarat.”
— Breanna Doody, City of Ballarat
The model
- Mutually reinforcing prevention and early intervention activities
- Community networks drive and reinforce prevention messages and behaviour change
- Continuous monitoring, evaluation and learning to refine the model
How it's designed
Research and evidence:
- Evidence reviews of saturation and best-practice prevention approaches
- Behaviour change and social norms research
- Consultation with saturation and prevention experts
Local context:
- Engagement with local organisations, networks and advocates
- Mapping Ballarat’s prevention system
- Analysing multiple data sources to build a picture of Ballarat
Co-design:
- Co-design working group supported by targeted community consultation
- Online engagement platform for the Ballarat public
- Roundtable consultations with local stakeholders
May 2024 – June 2025 milestones
- May 2024:
- Victorian State Government announces $9.8m over four years to fund the design and delivery of the Ballarat Community Saturation Model.
- Respect Victoria commences ongoing engagement and listening with the local community, including more than 90 consultations and meetings with individuals and organisations, and more than 25 presentations to networks, committees and stakeholder groups.
- June 2024:
- Respect Victoria publishes an international evidence review on the saturation approach.
- September 2024:
- Women’s Health Grampians compiles an evidence brief on the Ballarat area with contextual information and statistics.
- Workshop with 20 local agencies to surface enablers and barriers to prevention work in Ballarat.
- January 2025:
- Workshop to map current prevention, early intervention and response work in Ballarat.
- March 2025:
- Formal co-design process begins with a working group of 16 local community, organisational and sector representatives.
- Co-design community conversations begin with LGBTIQA+ communities, culturally and racially marginalised communities, young people and men.
- May 2025:
- Respect Victoria conducts an international literature review on early intervention definitions and practice.
- Ballarat and District Aboriginal Cooperative holds co-design community conversations with First Nations young people.
- Respect Victoria launches a public engagement platform to allow members of the Ballarat public to input into model design.
- June 2025:
- Respect Victoria commences partnership with Women’s Health Grampians to support community co-design conversations with women with disabilities.
“This model is about addressing the structural change that is needed. It’s a crucial tool of putting into practice what the community is crying out for. There is room now for these conversations to be happening. We’ve felt the appetite for change in a way that feels quite unique.”
– Rose Durey, Women’s Health Grampians
Early implementation deliverables
The first iteration of Respect Ballarat will commence implementation in the second half of 2025, supported with the following deliverables:
- Theory of Change for the model to make clear which behaviours in the short term will be targeted to reduce gendered violence in Ballarat in the long term
- criteria to guide the selection of the programs, activities and community actions in the model
- governance framework to oversee the implementation of the model and support Ballarat to sustain this work long-term
- three-year research, monitoring, evaluation and learning framework to track the model’s impact, progress and change over time
- research report exploring social identities and gender norms that may be reinforcing gendered violence in Ballarat
- ‘prevention 101’ training delivered to the wider community to support community action
- new name for the model that will resonate with and be meaningful to the community.
“These conversations are surfacing not just challenges, but also ideas — about how to close gaps in services, raise awareness, and strengthen community understanding. They’ve highlighted the tensions people navigate between culture, faith, traditional gender roles, and Australian laws and norms. It’s essential that people from diverse cultural backgrounds feel genuinely heard and valued in this work. This project is modelling what true co-design looks like — placing community voices at the centre and embracing the principle of ‘nothing about us without us.’”
— Shiree Pilkinton, Centre for Multicultural Youth