Specialist Family Violence Practitioner – After Hours

• Job Ref: SR0206
• Casual role
• SCHCADs Level 6 + Super + Salary Packaging
• Bayside Peninsula Location

About the Role:

The Senior Specialist Family Violence Practitioner – After Hours is an integral member of the family violence team. This role will work in our After-Hours program delivering high quality face to face and over the phone support to women and children who are experiencing family violence across the Bayside Peninsula Region.

The family violence responses will be provided at diverse locations within the region and may include service delivery sites, motels, police stations, hospitals, and other accommodations clients may be residing. This role requires a practitioner who can work independently and is able to apply framework and theories to provide the most appropriate and safe response to women and children experiencing family violence.

This role aims at supporting women and children to increase their safety through risk and needs assessments and safety planning. It also involves a holistic approach by providing additional support as required. This role will also provide support to other workers supporting family violence services including consultation and debriefing.

About the Responsibilities:

• Assessing after-hours referral from different sources and providing a family violence response
• Provide a specialist family violence response after-hours to victim survivors both adults and children
• Assessing the immediate situation, safety risk and support needs of women and accompanying children using the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework (MARAM)
• Complete risk assessments as required
• Complete safety planning and liaise with other services and stakeholders to increase safety of victim survivors including adults and children experiencing family violence
• Provide psycho-education and emotional support
• Support with the provision of emergency accommodation to victim survivors escaping family violence
• Complete after-hours outreach to victim survivors in diverse locations.
• Providing material aid that promotes safety, wellbeing and addressing victim survivors’ immediate needs
• Work collaboratively within a team and independently as well
• Completing all administrative duties linked with providing an after-hours response
• Attend meetings, supervision and other professional development activities as required.
• Additional tasks pertaining to the provision of an After-hours response in the family violence program

About You:

• Appropriate tertiary qualification in Social Work, Psychology, or a related tertiary discipline is essential
• Demonstrated experience using MARAM to assess risk, needs and protective factors of women and children, safety planning and determining appropriate referral pathways
• Demonstrate eligibility to work within the family violence sector under Recommendation 209 (See details below)
• Demonstrated ability to apply a trauma-informed framework to the various presentations of women and children
• Demonstrated experience working with women and children presenting with complex needs and behaviours (e.g. trauma, substance abuse, mental health, parenting issues, disability) and/or from CALD or indigenous backgrounds and/or LGBTIQA+ communities.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the impacts of family violence and the capacity to apply appropriate theoretical frameworks to practice
• Experience working with diverse communities experiencing multiple forms of discrimination and disadvantage (e.g. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities; people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities; people with disability; people from LGBTI communities).
• Demonstrated success in maintaining external networks and collaborative relationships with professionals both internal and external
• Demonstrated experience in preparing written reports, maintaining records, including case notes and data base reporting
• Flexibility and availability to deliver the after-hours service during evenings throughout the week, including public holidays
• Demonstrated success working as part of an effective and productive team, along with the ability to be self-directed
• Demonstrated commitment to personal professional development including knowledge of the Royal Commission into Family Violence Recommendations and the broader impact of the current reforms on the family violence sector
• Experience working in a senior practitioner or leadership role highly desirable
• A current Australian Drivers Licence

Minimum Mandatory Qualifications Requirements (Rec209)

The minimum mandatory qualifications requirements are in place in Victoria and have been since the 1st of July 2021 are available on www.vic.gov.au/mandatory-minimum-qualifications-specialist-family-violence-practitioners. 

Please contact us on [email protected] using the subject line: Specialist Family Violence Practitioner – After Hours enquiry via EthicalJobs if you have any questions about these requirements.

About Good Shepherd

Our 2023-2027 strategy outlines the world we want to see and our role in advancing it. We aspire for all women, girls, and families to be safe, well, strong, and connected. We strive for equity, dignity and social justice for women, girls and families by collaborating globally and acting locally, supporting our communities in Australia and New Zealand to thrive.

We want women, girls and families to live full and dignified lives, have dignified income and enjoy financial wellbeing.  We aim to provide place-based, people-centred, holistic services while working at the system level to achieve bold and audacious reform. We currently offer micro-finance programs and products, financial counselling and coaching, family and domestic violence support services, family and youth programs, playgroups, education programs and community houses. These services are complemented by research and strong advocacy to address the underlying structural causes of injustice, exclusion, and inequality.