By Max Davies
Kilmore District Health, KDH, is once again involved with the 16 Days of Activism campaign, encouraging staff to participate in a daily walk and wear orange to show their support.
As part of the 16 Days campaign, KDH is also taking part in a project called Strengthening Hospital Response to Family Violence and taking careful consideration of how they respond to patients and staff who might be experiencing family violence.
KDH aims to present itself as a safe place where people can go to receive support, empowering people to make their own decisions and get help in a way that works best for them.
KDH nurse educator Regula McKinlay said Victorian hospitals, including KDH, were looking to change the way they responded to family violence and improve in several areas.
“[Often] if someone is in a serious or difficult situation where family violence is experienced, they will seek help at a hospital,” she said.
“Historically, [the health sector] wasn’t very good at responding to family violence issues. What has changed is that we teach staff now about how to see it and how to sensitively respond, and find a really good solution where the victim or survivor is empowered to manage their own life in a very safe and helpful way.”
Strengthening Hospital Response to Family Violence is a State Government initiative that began as a way to improve the response to family violence from the health sector and provide options for people going through difficult situations.
A key aspect is the education of healthcare workers, who undergo training as part of the program to not only be able to better understand and care for patients or other staff dealing with family violence, but also how to manage their own health when assisting with potentially stressful circumstances.
“Within the hospitals we have what we call clinical champions, who have a good understanding of what family violence is, how it presents and what we as nursing staff and doctors can do,” Ms McKinlay said.
“At the moment, there’s about 20 [at KDH] who are clinical champions. The biggest thing is the increased understanding of what family violence is, and then the ability to be able to sensitively inquire and have tools to help someone to be able to talk about what’s going on and empower them to change things.”
KDH has also benefited from the addition of the Multi Agency Risk Assessment and Management framework, MARAM, through the Strengthening Hospital Response to Family Violence program, allowing agencies to talk with each other and share information in a legal and safe manner.
The information sharing scheme allows agencies such as hospitals and police to share information in order to streamline the process of providing care and protection for people in need.
Information sharing only takes place when someone is at risk, with confidentiality observed unless absolutely necessary.
“We can now start to share when children are at risk with the police in a much easier way for example, or the police can share with us, or schools can share information with their healthcare service to help pick up people who need help a lot earlier,” Ms McKinlay said.
Ms McKinlay said the aim of KDH’s program as part of 16 Days of Activism was to spread awareness of what services were available through the hospital.
“A lot of people feel very isolated when they are experiencing family violence,” she said.
“The biggest thing is making the community aware that [KDH] is doing this work into family violence, that we are a safe place, and that we want to work at the grassroots level of changing a culture where women are respected and are given a voice for us to listen to as a health organisation.
“We want to make it as equal as possible in this world for men and women. If [people] feel valued and respected, they have a much, much higher chance of being able to get out of difficult situations.”
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