It's all about the nuance - Effective multicultural lived experience engagement for people affected by family violence

Capturing the consumer voice by integrating the breadth and depth of lived experience is the fundamental to responsive social policy.

How can we listen, acknowledge, and honour the voice of our diverse communities, including those in the community that are living in crisis yet whose insights can reveal fundamental cracks in the system not otherwise observable by those that work in it? Is an interview or a focus group enough? Can one’s story be covered across the language divide in 30 minutes or do we need 60 minutes?

Ela Stewart with InTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence explores some of the nuance required to assure a fundamental respect for those with which partners seek to engage.

The voices of those with lived experience has been recognised as a crucial addition to the development of policy. This was also highlighted and committed to in the Second National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children – which was released in October this year. This is an excellent and critical development to ensure that policy is relevant and effective, but we still have a long way to go.

I work for an organisation that assists migrant and refugee communities experiencing family violence. We have an incredible team of case managers, who provide support and guidance to victim-survivors of family violence. A tough and complex job.

Most of our clients have only been in the country for less than five years. So, along with securing their immediate safety and wellbeing, our clients will often need intensive support in order to navigate complex services systems, like Centrelink, family court and child protection- without the assistance of friends or family, in an unfamiliar language.

What makes our organisation particularly special is that we provide our services in a culturally appropriate fashion. Clients are linked with case managers that either speak their language, are from their country of origin, ethnic/cultural group, or are from the same faith background.

The impact this can have on a victim-survivor's life and recovery cannot be underestimated. What this means in practice is that they are connected to a case manager that understands the nuances around family relationships, marriage, and cultural traditions.  The case manager can provide information about laws, processes, and concepts relevant to family violence in Australia, in a way that is sensitive to the client’s needs. Their personal or cultural values are not othered, nor are they judged. Rather, someone from the victim-survivor's own cultural background is relating to her, unpacking her experiences and offering solidarity and support when she needs it most.

Another key component to our service’s efficacy is that all our case managers are from migrant and refugee backgrounds themselves. They understand the challenges associated with migration and the difficulties of the settlement journey, unfamiliar social and bureaucratic systems, and the isolation that many people feel when they cannot effectively express themselves in a language that is foreign to them.

Our organisation is frequently approached by researchers and organisations that are trying to understand or capture the voices of migrant and refugee communities to include in their research. They want to interview or hold focus groups with people from migrant and refugee backgrounds to expand their body of research.

In order to effectively address the problem of family violence in all communities, the voices of migrant and refugee communities should be meaningfully embedded in policy across every sector. However, this must occur beyond consultation or surveys; these voices must be clearly present in the workforce and amongst policymakers themselves. This is what makes our organisation so effective in assisting the women and communities that seek our support, and why we need the sector and public service to go beyond policies on intersectionality and truly commit to cultural change, by hiring and investing in people with lived experience and diverse perspectives.

Ela Stewart is the Manager – Policy, Research and Communications with inTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence. As part of her role, Ela drives, develops and promotes inTouch’s strategic responses to policies and programs that impact temporary visa holders and migrant and refugee communities experiencing family violence in Victoria and Australia through the development of high-quality research and policy activities at local, state and national settings.

Prior to working at inTouch, Ela worked in the community legal sector coordinating social policy initiatives as well as developing and implementing community education programs, focusing specifically on access to justice for hard-to-reach communities. Ela also has a background in the tertiary education sector, having worked as a researcher and teacher in politics and history at Monash University. Ela is contactable on elas@intouch.org.au.

Moderator: Jade Hart