About Us
The Safer Families Centre is connected to the Sexual And Family ViolencE (SAFE) team within the Department of General Practice at The University of Melbourne. Our Centre is committed to transforming health sector policy and practice responses to domestic, family and sexual violence through research, training, support tools and evaluation. We collaborate internationally and locally with researchers, practitioners and our lived experience victim-survivor group to promote safety, wellbeing and healing of families.
Our Centre’s work stems from our long history at The University of Melbourne in working with health practitioners and victim-survivors, including the formation in 2016 of our current lived experience survivor group (WEAVERs). Also foundational to our existence are our affiliations with the Melbourne Research Alliance to End Violence Against Women and their Children (MAEVe) and the Centre for Family Violence Prevention at the Royal Women’s Hospital.
In 2017 The University of Melbourne partnered with Murdoch Childrens’ Research Institute, La Trobe University and South Australia Health and Medical Research Institute to establish an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence to promote safer families. In 2020, the Centre partnered with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, Blue Knot Foundation and Phoenix Australia to develop, deliver and lead a national domestic and family violence training arm for primary care: The Readiness Program.
Our broader research within the SAFE team uses mixed methods and spans multiple disciplines to understand the dynamics of all types of domestic, family and sexual violence; the links between violence and health; and to develop and test interventions for screening, early identification and responses for women, children, young people and men, including the use of technologies.