 Hi and welcome to the Family Violence Collab Lab this morning. My name is Sabine Foundbacher and I am the facilitator of this session. Before we begin, I'm just going to, hello, someone said hello in the chat, that's lovely. Before we begin with the content of today, I want to recognise and pay my respect to the traditional owners of the various lands that we are on today, where we work, where we live, and where we meet today, and where we want play as well. I'm on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation in Naam, that's also known as Melbourne. I pay my respect to their elders past, present and future. I acknowledge First Nation people's strength, their survival, their continuous connection to land, to waterways and to community. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. Now the audience, I'm just needing to tell you that you can see me maybe in a little picture and also the slides, but I can't see you. So we'll just go forward as we do in this session. It is so great to be here with you this morning in Naam, in Melbourne, it's a rainy day outside and it's kind of cozy inside and I hope you are in a good space as well, and it's really lovely people sharing in the chat where they're positioned as well. And this is a big audience today. We have about 240 people in the room, which is just fabulous. And we're from all parts, I believe, across the country, from many different disciplines and also from many different, in many different roles, which is fabulous because that's what the spirit of today is about. It's to learn as much as possible about interdisciplinary collaborative care from each other and by talking with each other and relating with each other. We aim that at the end of this session that we all have increased our confidence about providing interdisciplinary and collaborative care when we respond to people who experience both mental health concerns or challenges and family violence. And that we also have a better understanding of how interdisciplinary and collaborative care can contribute to better outcomes for individuals and for families where family violence and mental health challenges or mental illness occurs. So just as a way of introducing you to this morning's session, which is day number two of this conference, and yesterday went really well, we just heard that. So today is a three-part activity. If we can click to the next slide, I think we've got a bit of an outline on that. In part one, great, thank you. So in part one, we're in this large room, even though you might not feel like that because you might be sitting in your office, but we're in this room all together. In a little while, I will provide you with a pretty brief overview around some of the intersection of family violence and mental health. I will also pay attention to why and how COVID and climate change and weather-related events might impact on this work that we do in this space. In part two, as you can see on the slide there, you will meet your moderators and we will put you into breakout rooms and we'll talk you through that when we get to that, how that will all work. And that's where you will come in really importantly and hopefully have some really good discussions and chats about vignettes that we have prepared for you for this session specifically. So you'll be provided with that vignette in your breakout room and we'll have a discussion, a guided discussion in that. In part three, as you can see there, we'll have some time to come back together in this larger group. The facilitators of the breakout rooms will provide a little bit of feedback so we can all share and hear what other groups learned and what they talked about and then we come to a close at 1pm. We are mindful of the large number of participants today. So here is how the fabulous people who have organised this conference and us together how we're wanting to manage this. As you can see and I can see the chat is quite busy there and people are saying hello which is so lovely to each other and to all of us. In parts one and three, so when we're in this large group, you can't unmute and jump into chat because there are, as I said, 341 people we've got now in the room so that will be just too much. But in the breakout rooms, of course, you will be able to unmute and contribute which is what we're hoping that you do, of course. You can also in the chat ask for any technical assistance and we know and have worked with the tech team, they're fabulous and they'll be reaching out to you to assist you if you've got any problems. Emily, did you want to say anything on that? I think I can cover this. Emily is our tech person. So I think most of you have found the chat and are using that already so we can probably go to the next slide unless you want to say something, Emily. Say hello. Hello, Sabin. No, all good, thank you. But yeah, certainly if anyone has tech issues, pop them in the chat and we'll be there. Yeah, when you enter the room, Emily will talk you through that later on. Your camera will be off and you'll be muted and we'll ask you to turn your camera on. But we'll come to that later. And I will also, before you go into those rooms, I'll introduce you to your facilitators. OK. So let's do a little switch from all these kind of instructions. There are a few and we'll come back to those. And I want you, I want to now give you a bit of an overview around the area of family violence and mental health. We're not wanting to spend too much time on this. So as you could imagine, it's it's kind of, yeah, it's a brief overview. And I want to touch on some of the issues. Of course, there are many more than I'll be able to talk about today. I want to thank the mental health professional network to that invited myself and others to look at the issue of family violence and mental health, which I'm really pleased to say, of course, across the country is gaining in focus. Some years ago, when many of us started working on this, people walked away and didn't want to know about it. You're all here, which tells me a lot about that things are changing across the country. So I'm grateful that you're here in this session. I wanted to, before going into the content, just remind us that family violence is a pretty gendered form of violence and victim survivors. And that's a term I will use, which we use in Victoria, mostly women and children. So mostly my talk will focus on that. But please remember always that, of course, there are many other people who also experience family violence, any gender, the LGBTIQ plus community. And of course, men can experience family violence as well. Or there's also elder abuse. But that will be mostly my focus. But we always want to keep in mind intersectional issues, but also that many different people can experience family violence. Of course, if we can go to the next slide, which just will tell you about our own acknowledgements, we've paid respect to our First Nation people. I also always want to acknowledge victim survivors who, as I just said, are mostly women and children, but not only women, children and young people. And I know this is a sobering way to start this session. I also want to acknowledge those who have not survived family violence. And all of us who work in this space, we bring them with us as well. And we want to remember them. And this is partly also why we do this work and continue to do this work, to hopefully get to a place maybe one day where we don't have to do those acknowledgements anymore. I'm forever hopeful. Oh, this is so lovely. I can see little hearts coming up. Thank you. Oh, no, you're with me. If we go to the next slide, that is a reminder to please look after yourself today in this session, as you transition out of this session later on, and also at any time that you work with somebody where family violence is present. We know that in a room, this large or in almost any room, there will be many of us who've experienced family violence as a child or as an adult. We might love somebody who experiences it currently. It might be a neighbor. We might be working in it. It is good practice to look after ourselves. I've provided you here with one support organization, 1-800-RESPECT, which is known to many people. And 1-800-RESPECT doesn't just provide support to victim survivors, but also to professionals as well. And at the end of the session, I have some more of this PowerPoint. I have some more suggestions for you as well. All right. Let's go to the next slide. Thank you. Oh, we're already there. Thankfully, you're fabulous. I want to take a moment and invite you to consider both issues, family violence and mental illness or mental health challenges, whatever language we might want to use, and the stigma that is associated in our society with family violence. And then take a moment to consider the stigma associated with mental illness in our society. Consider the shame that we know, that people who experience family violence experience and consider the shame associated with mental illness that occurs. I'm not saying that people ought to be ashamed, but we know there is a lot of shame around both issues. And then consider doubling off that shame and also off that stigma when someone experiences both. And maybe they experience more issues than that in their life, but they might be experiencing both of those, which is why we're here. I'm always surprised that people tell us anything about family violence and their experiences. It is such an incredibly personal issue that is connected with so many emotions. And it is so hard to talk about it for many people. So I want to invite us all to keep that in mind as we go through this session today and as you discuss also the case scenarios later on. I nearly said this afternoon, later on this morning. I always feel humble when somebody shares that they've experienced family violence and no matter who they are, if it's work, a neighbour, a family member or a friend, I thank them that they trust me with that information. So that's just a way of starting our kind of way into this conversation today. If we go to the next slide, there are many impacts, and I've just listed a few of those here. There are many more, of course. We know that family violence disrupts people's lives hugely. Often there's a loss of income, many financial impacts or impact on economic status. Lately we hear more and more about that older women are the largest growing group of homeless people in Australia and not all, but many have experienced family violence, so it's post-family violence. Family violence disrupts work and study for all generations, for children, for young people, for adults. People have to move or can't continue to go to school where they are. Family violence impacts on health and also, of course, on mental health, and that's also what we're looking at today. If we can go to the next slide, there are a range of mental health impacts, and again, I've just listed some here. Anxiety and depression is often experienced by people who go through family violence, sleeping and eating problems, or if we, in particular, what we know from a trauma-informed care and practice lens, we understand that some people will use drugs or alcohol or prescription medication use to ameliorate some of the impacts or the triggers if the violence occurred during childhood or some years ago, excuse me, and we understand then where that comes from. Of course, sometimes that can become unhealthy or unhelpful way to live, but we understand why people might do that to manage. There are sometimes post-traumatic stress symptoms, even if somebody doesn't have that diagnosis. Similarly, why somebody might self-harm to actually deal with flashbacks and triggers. So trauma-informed care and practice can really help us to understand that. Women with diagnosed mental illness, in particular, if we go to the next slide, I confronted with a range of issues in the next few slides. I'm just wanting to talk with you about some of those. Most women who have a diagnosis of mental illness have experienced multiple types of trauma over a lifetime. We know that they have experienced or experienced high levels of family violence and are confronted with some systemic issues as well that I will come back to in a little while. See there the lack of access to services or appropriate support that is really holistic and brings all those issues together. And I'm so grateful that we've got two colleagues who work on that and have been instrumental in setting up the first-ever women's trauma service in the Yillawara, but we'll come back to that. So there are hopeful and many hopeful examples where people collaborate really well together. Another aspect of mental health and mental illness and family violence that hasn't had, I think, enough focus as yet is how mental illness is used against women or people when family violence is being perpetrated. So the next slide, again, gives us a little bit of an overview and I call that weaponizing if we go to the next slide, we can see that. So for example, telling a woman that she lacks skills to live alone or without the other person and we have many, many women who've said over time, my self-confidence got so eroded, I thought I couldn't live with this other person, I couldn't run my own life. For women who are mothers or people who are parents, they're often accused that they're a bad parent. We know there's a lot of stigma around being a person with a mental illness and being a parent in society that somebody couldn't be a good parent, but also it is used against and to threaten to get professionals involved. We know that of situations, for example, where the police turns up at the door, I'm going to stay in the heterosexual binary here and the male of the household, the family, is at the door, Cork Carbon collected and said, look at her, look at her, she's mad, she is a bad mother, she pushed me, I didn't do anything and the woman is distressed and it kind of plays into what a person with mental illness looks like, but also that she's not a good parent. And that we know from practice wisdom and from people who've lived in living experience around making things up, for example, somebody, yeah, somebody just said gaslighting, absolutely. So one example is somebody who might have psychotic illness or an illness with psychotic features who comes home and says, oh, have you moved the furniture around and the other person goes, no, I didn't do anything. Oh, I think you're deteriorating quotation mark, you becoming unwell, let's get the cat team involved or whatever, and actually, in fact, they had moved around the furniture. So playing into the symptoms or how people experience when they have a mental illness. And of course, if there are children involved, the, you know, shouldn't see the children and also trying to turn children in particular adolescents against the parent with a mental illness. Some of these things became worse. We were saying we want to also look at COVID and climate change and weather impacts. And I just wanted to give you some examples from in particular that time that I know, and I'm sure those of you in areas, if we, yep, we can stay with that as well, it doesn't matter. So people who perpetrated family violence said, I've got COVID, you can't leave the house when we had lockdowns. People in during lockdown were spending all time at home. So there was really, you know, no escape. Services funded really hard to reach out. Child protection or other workers were saying, we couldn't see the children. We, you know, we couldn't actually see the children and assess how the children are going to get some good support. We know that young LGBTIQ plus people, in particular, if they hadn't either come out to their families or their families had already, you know, turf them out or were unsupported or them had to move back in. That was during COVID. We know how hard it is to rent at the moment too. So sometimes young people might have to move back in and all they have is their bedroom and their online community where they can get support. If part of family violence perpetration is, you know, continuously misgendering somebody or not accepting them and not supporting them in their, you know, gender identity or their sexuality. And I also wanted to remind everybody, of course, that those things also have impact on those of you, all of us who work in this area and that it was harder and can be harder during those times to actually get support to people because it is harder. We need to be more creative to get support to people literally. And I know maternal child health nurses, for example, said they would make a time for somebody when they were allowed to go shopping to have a quick five, 10 minute check-in because the woman was allowed to do that. So just some examples of what happens during those times. Here you've got a few more, you know, quite awful really. Examples of how mental health or mental illness is weaponised. So threatening to take children away, if not that, but to report to child protection. And as a reminder, if we think about intersectional challenges and barriers, of course, for some population groups, that is, a much larger threat for people with mental illness or parents with mental illness, of course. And it's a real threat. And, you know, First Nation communities where there is a history of child removal. So they are powerful things to have over somebody or threaten them with. And also, you know, forcing somebody to participate in the mental health service or call the CAT team, those kind of things as well. If we go to the next slide, I just wanted to point out some, there are a lot of systemic barriers and challenges. And hopefully we all work to minimise those. And in the case scenario discussions, I imagine that you would talk about some of these as well. So there are multiple barriers to disclosure. Is it safe to disclose? Am I going to be met with the response that I'm seeking? What is this professional that I'm seeing if I'm the person? What's their attitude? What are their skills? We know that some practitioners, of course, don't feel equipped or skilled to work in that area. Victim survivors are really good in picking that up and won't talk about it. Women with mental illness in particular, and you will see this comes up a number of times and we know this from research, we know this from professionals and we know this from people with lived experience, women with lived experience, that often they're not believed. It's part of a delusional system, I have heard that often in some mental health areas, or that trauma is missed. It's seen as a mental illness rather than a trauma reaction. And also that, you know, exclusion from services. We know that some services in the community might say, oh, we don't know how to work with mental illness, we can work with family violence, but not with this, and the other way around. Moving on, women's experiences with health and mental health services has, I'm glad, has been researched, and our next slide provides you a little bit of an overview. Again, you see there about not being believed, about being doubted, or being dismissed. It's not that bad, this doesn't cause this, or, you know, we're focusing on, let's say, the mental health and treatment and thinking that people, thinking that they can separate out the distress that family violence, the stress response as part of family violence, or people saying it's not part of my role, I'm not a family violence specialist. And the good news is we don't have to be family violence specialists, but we need to know enough about family violence to collaborate and support as well as we can. In some areas, of course, in some times in mental health services, it can be that, again, trauma or family violence is missed because the focus is so strong on biological factors that trauma doesn't, I think that is really changing, and trauma-informed care has really been introduced across, even though we've got a long way to go to embed it, I think all of that is changing a little bit. So what can we do? The next slide provides you with one way to think about this, and the World Health Organization, way back in 2014, provided us with an approach and a model, or best practice guidelines, which are listen, inquire, validate, enhance, and support. They did extensive research with victims' survivors, and this suggests is that what we can do is we can listen without judgment, we can inquire with healthy curiosity and respect, we can validate somebody's experience, we can enhance, and we must enhance their safety, and we can provide support and follow-up. We might not be able to do all of that ourselves, but we can collaborate with other people, and that's why we're here today. The next slide provides you just with, provides us just with a bit of an overview of a study done in Victoria, which asked women, what do you want when you go and see a health professional, and you've experienced family violence? And part of it seems so simple, and part of that makes me almost sad that what women want and often don't get is an emotional connection, so emotionally feeling connected with when they disclose family violence. I would also call it being met. Recognition and understanding, understanding what somebody is going through and recognizing that they're going through family violence that they're experiencing it now or have experienced it, but they also don't want it just to stop there. They want some action as in support and some advocacy and also really importantly, choice and control about what happens. And towards the end of this, and I won't go through that, there are two, we call them wheels that you could, in your own time, when you get the slides after the session, can take a look at also about how we can sometimes take away that choice and control if we're not careful and if we're not, and that we want to avoid a parallel process of doing too. So we always want to do with and respect someone's choice about, we might want to think that we want someone to leave, but we want them to have autonomy over their decisions. Jumping to the next slide and I'm just noticing the time, so I won't go through this long, but one of the most important things we can do is to validate what someone tells us to respond to the person before the situation. So we don't have to jump into action hardly ever, unless it's a life-threatening situation that we want to communicate that we see the person and believe them and that we want to be present for them as I was saying earlier on. So thank you, that was a very quick overview and even with that, I've gone a couple of minutes over, so I'll try to make up time. Yes, agree the sense of validation is sometimes the main thing that we can do and if somebody has felt validated, they might actually come back to us to say, I would like to talk some more with you, I could do this now. Okay, change of focus. I would now like to introduce you to our moderators. In a moment, you will be going into breakout rooms and I can see them come up on our screen, how lovely. I hope you can see them too. On the conference website, the little wife, thank you, hello team. On the conference website, you can actually read everyone's bio. So I'm just going to do a quick introduction and you'll all introduce yourselves to your rooms as well. I'm wrapped to be here with these fabulous women. So Sally Stevenson, if you want to do a little wave again, Sally, is the executive director of the Illawarra Women's Health Centre and has been in that role for the past nine years. Laura Brooks is the major health team leader at the Illawarra Women's Health Centre and also a certified trainer for the safe and together model. Sally and Laura together with others have led a national campaign to establish Australia's first women's trauma recovery centre which is well underway. If you want to find out more about it, Google the service. It's a very hopeful initiative that hopefully, you know, eventually might be replicated across the country. Sarah Johnson, if you want to do a little wave is an independent consultant, facilitator and coach who has worked in leadership roles in family violence and youth work in others sectors for over 20 years. Last but not least, Dr. Liz McClendon or Elizabeth McClendon is a research fellow with the sexual abuse and family violence programme at the University of Melbourne. And she's also a senior sexual counsellor and counsellor advocate, sorry, at Casa House at the Women's Hospital in Melbourne. So you can see, audience, you are an excellent company with these fabulous women who will bring a vast experience to this area of work. Wonderful. I was just about, hello and welcome back, everybody. We've got, oh, wow, we've got 460 people. You all come back. Most of you have come back wonderful. Thank you. It was just a little tech glitch. But I'm now, I think, on camera and you can hear me. And we've got our lovely breakout room facilitators in the space as well. And Sarah will join us in a moment too. So I dipped in and out of your sessions and there was vigorous and great discussions. So I'm not going to take up too much time right now and we'll hand over to the four facilitators in a moment who will give a bit of feedback what the discussions were in your room. So we're curious about what you learned, what your room learned in particular around collaboration and of course also some of the hurdles and opportunities if you could give us like three top points or something like that, that will be wonderful. Who would like to go first? Sally, you're unmuted. Did you want to go first? I was concentrating on something while you were saying that. I just want to start off with one that I just want to thank the group that I was with because I thought the conversation was really rich and informed and positive around understanding of what was going on. But both a protective factor but also a risk factor is the involvement of services. And I think it depends on how those services collaborate obviously, but how they understand and interpret Emily's behavior and how they acknowledge how to empower someone or how to work with someone from a strengths-based approach. So it can be overwhelming if you've got four or five services involved, you've got to go to appointments, you can't make them all because there's some coercive control. But if those services first of all work together and take the opportunities of when somebody's in a room with them, they can access other services. And if they listen to what is important to her and then work from that basis and prioritize according to her needs and her perceptions, that's the beginning of respect and dignity and empowerment. So it really does, you know, services can really be both. And so what we need as a sector is to understand the underlying complexities of domestic violence, the symptoms and the needs to be strength-based and person-based. Oh, what a fabulous summary. Thank you, Sally. That sounds like such a rich discussion. And I was in it. A couple of things just to quickly pull out. Strength-based collaboration with practitioners can also feel overwhelmed by the number of organizations involved, isn't it? And go at the person's pace. As a reminder in the PowerPoint that people get later on, there are two tools in there that I thought might be helpful. One is the power and control wheel that describes behavior that is called domestic or family violence, which sometimes practitioners have still to this day find helpful to when talking with somebody, in particular, I know in some conversations where people are saying, what if the person doesn't recognize it? It can be a helpful tool. But there's also one about a medical power and control wheel. And Sally, what I'm just hearing is, let's go by what the person wants. We might have our hopes and dreams and wishes, but it's actually what the woman wants. I'm not talking about pointy and life-death situations. Other things have to be done. And sometimes we have to override someone's right in that way, but really is about meaning where they're at, validating and working with them, isn't it? Which is what you've just said. Fabulous. Thank you, Sally. Welcome, Sarah, as well. We jumped into the feedback and we're doing it a little bit, going round the room. So Laura or Liz, just to let you settle in a bit, Sarah, who would like to go next from your group? Just tell us what you want to jump in. And to say that my group also had a fantastic discussion and I want to thank everybody who participated in that. We focused on the vignette of Ruth. I think it was really clear in our conversation that we, as a clinician from a particular, with a particular professional background or working in a particular service or perhaps in private practice, kind of have one piece of the puzzle and that when we can talk and collaborate with other services or other people with expertise, we're really increasing what we've got the potential to do and that collaboration, especially in a situation where we had three members of a family here that we were trying to think about all together, that really increased what we had the capacity to do in terms of identifying risk, in terms of identifying protective factors and trying to strengthen those, but also in terms of trying to need out some of the hurdles to multi-agency or multi-service responses to a family like this. Some of the other things that people were saying really strongly in our group was around trying to recognise that Ruth's experience as a victim survivor may be one of not having control, not being in control and that in our role as a clinician or a service provider, if we can be trying to share as much control to try and be really clear in our communication in trying to talk through and hear what it is that the victim survivor wants and needs, what their assessment of risk is, is a way of trying to maximise how much control Ruth feels, but that also someone really poignantly pointed out in our group that the person using abusive behaviour, in this case, it was Ari, that Ari might seem to us he'd been threatening self-harm behaviour, he might seem to us as somebody who's increasingly feeling out of control and that he is trying to get control in a way that's harmful by using violence in the family. So kind of picking up on that as a clinician and thinking about how can we adaptively work with that need for control in a way that's kind of safe. But somebody else really importantly said in terms of trying to increase the opportunities for effective collaboration that may be mapping out the services that are involved and trying to talk about who's going to be the lead here, who's going to try and coordinate the services and everyone be on the same page with that, but really importantly, the victim survivor kind of being in control of aware, being aware of who's involved and then who might kind of lead some of those collaborations. Sorry, I just wrote a note down and there's lots of clapping going up and you just finished. Thanks, Liz. What a great summary and sounds like a fabulous discussion as well. And I know I was in the room a few times as I walked around the rooms. So much around, I was just thinking, none of us know everything about somebody's situation, don't we? And I think what's starting to really come to the force and I know it's not something new, but sometimes we forget that we have a particular angle but also we only get part of a story for no other reason that there is many people's lives. So there's a lot going on. So by collaborating with others, we can respectfully put that kind of picture, understand the person better as the person in their family including their children. And also Liz, what you were saying that you talked about that sharing of power and power and control and not doing to again to somebody, but also recognising sometimes we need to recognise that we're in a relatively powerful situation. Well, we're a worker, aren't we? Someone comes to us for assistance, so unless we recognise that we might find it harder to share that power. And another thing that came to mind was that collaboration ought to get rid of hurdles, get rid of barriers and that we want to contribute to getting rid of those and increasing support and safety and simplifying the system, not making it more complex, isn't it? And I know in the past when I've been in situations where a few of our service providers get overwhelmed, then I think, wow, what must it be like for that person or the family? It's a good indication, isn't it? Because there's sometimes a parallel process. Thanks, Liz. Who wants to go next? I'll jump in. We, our vignette was Emily, so we focused on that, which for those that didn't have Emily was a family and there was some child protection involvement as well. And really similar to, first of all, as Sally mentioned, I want to thank my group as well. We had a really diverse set of expertise within the space that I was in and diversity through in terms of where people were around the country in rural, remote, as well as regional and the city. So that was really excellent. But we're very similar to some of the things that Liz and Sally shared, is that we talked a lot about remaining child-centered. So focusing on the impact of, you know, coercive control and violence on mum and then what that means for attachment with her two children, how that impacts on her mental health and impacts on, you know, if there's substance use and also impacts on her relationship and her time with the kids. So that was a big focus. And one of the participants shared at the end around the importance of holistic practice. So, you know, we spoke a lot about moving away from the siloed practices where exactly what Sally said, we're sending women here, they're everywhere and women are having to navigate this complex system while they're still in DV and managing multiple things and how confusing and overwhelming that is, you know, for someone that's functioning at a high level and not in DV, let alone someone that's in this high level of coercive control. So we spoke a lot about similar to what Liz said around a lead agency in our vignette, we thought that would be child protection and someone taking the lead on coordinating collaboration, services, sharing information. For us, we use the analogy of the iceberg. And so, like Liz said, sometimes we have someone in our office presenting and we're seeing the tip of the iceberg but we're not understanding all of the stuff which in our vignette was the coercive control that's underneath that's impacting and creating this presentation. So we talked about the importance of systems and practitioners collaborating and sharing information so we can understand what's happening for a month. And we also talked about, you know, systems like child protection working with fathers as well and working with fathers around their mental health, around their use of violence and, you know, one, holding them accountable and getting them to take responsibility but also two, giving them the opportunity to create meaningful change, to be better role models for their children and to think about how they wanna be with their children, how they wanna be role models and what they wanna change in their lives. So we spoke about that as well. That was a really quick overview. Yeah. Thank you. Gosh, I'm amazed how well you're all doing in summarizing really complex discussions. Thanks Laura. So lots of things to take there as well and I was just looking into the chat a little bit and people are really appreciating even some people who missed out on some of the session really found this helpful. So I'm so glad about that. So you've raised similar issues but also additional ones around that collaboration and a really important part, isn't it? For a long time, certainly those of us who've worked in the family violence or domestic violence sector know that if we stay in that gender binary, you know, men who use violence, there has been still, there still isn't, there's still so much more work to be done and unknown in another session. Someone also said, you know, how do we work with men to assist them and change their behavior? And we know there are some programs but there certainly aren't enough. Laura, what you also raised, what I thought was, I know in Victoria, we've talked about this very, this fair amount is when, for example, someone who uses violence is involved with a, in this case, a mental health service or an ARD service or whatever service, how important that relationship is and actually supporting in this case, a male who has maybe a mental illness and be really sensitive about and really know about how to work with them if they're both using violence because we don't wanna sever that relationship because that can be a protective factor for somebody, you know, if their mental health gets better, not that that causes, you know, using violence but it certainly increases stress if somebody's mental health is not going so well. So just a reminder that we want to support people, you know, that people also who use violence, of course, so need good support from a range of people as well. Thank you, last but not least, if we can come to you, Sarah, if you can give us a little overview of your conversations. Thanks so much, Sabine. I'm very conscious being the last person to report back, I don't want to repeat what I was just saying. So I thought what I might do is actually share some of the reflections from our group around, you know, why they will collaborate because I think this is incredible, some of what people shared was incredibly powerful as we left our discussion, I asked them why would you collaborate based on everything that we'd heard in our discussion. And some of the things that people said were, you know, well, we want to be able to provide wraparound support that is going to be the best support for every part of the concern or issue or opportunities that we're seeing present. And people talked about kind of having more eyes on or more heads around, you know, the works, having more eyes on the family, being able to share the risk factors, pick up on things that maybe others haven't to ensure that we've really driving the best risk assessment and risk management process possible. We had people describe that, you know, the more collaboration that is occurring, the more opportunities there are for people to see if risk is escalating. And so that's going to enhance safety as we progress with working alongside folks. One of our participants also talked about that actually, you know, they were reflecting that in the resource poor, very remote indigenous setting that they're operating, the need for collaboration is actually fundamental to being effective. But without collaboration, they couldn't actually be effective in responding to family violence. There were also some reflections around just that collegiate support that comes with collaborating. So, you know, being able to share skills and knowledge, learning, reflective opportunities, having those opportunities to have these really established service provider relationships with each other and sharing values and really kind of moving towards a, you know, a safer community for everyone. And I jotted down this quote from someone from the chat because I loved it and I just think it's such a, just summarizes why we do this work together. And this person said, sorry I was being so quick, I didn't grab the person's name, but they said because violence and control thrives in isolation and individualistic approaches, which I just think is just the icing on the cake of this conversation. So thank you so much to my group for the beautiful sharing today. Oh, and I hope you could see that in your group. You just got a whole lot of love hearts. I so love that, how we can do that. Thank you too, Sarah, for a really comprehensive summary. Wow, again, and I'm glad you looked at, you know, why would you collaborate and what's the benefits from it? Because sometimes we can get caught up in our, you know, of course it takes time, it takes time to establish relationships, but my goodness, when I know, when I've collaborated, it's nothing to pick up, to pick up the phone, to, you know, to connect with people and get some support as well. And as we're coming towards the end of this session, it's also our peers or our colleagues that sometimes we can debrief for, you know, we're all impacted sometimes. And we can say, I'm finding this really hard, you know, those good, good things as well, but also, and also what you were saying about more eyes on a family, for example, you know, sometimes there are multiple, there are several children, there are other family members involved, sometimes there is more than one person who uses violence against someone who can keep their eye on everybody, we can't. And that goes for the risk factors, which you looked at as well, and also the protective factors, isn't it? Because if we don't talk with the teacher, we don't know that that child is doing, you know, XYZ at school and is going really well or not so. If I don't talk with the maternal child health nurse who has excellent skills around recognizing signs and symptoms in babies about family violence, we miss out on, you know, a response from a baby. So I suppose the reminder in those last few minutes, and there's lots going on in the chat, I'll have a look at it later, sorry, we can't read it out, is that collaborating absolutely, those keeping those eyes on everybody, but also that holistic care and that beautiful quote, Sarah, that you, and thank you to the person who did that, absolutely, what is one of the things that is so often part of perpetration or family violence or intimate partner violence is isolating people from support. So the better, the more we can work against that and the more we can work together, respectfully in terms of, you know, information sharing and all those things, the more we can get rid of some of that isolation, at least in a service context. That doesn't make up for everything, but it makes up for some. I think another really clear message there was children and really if we don't know so much to signs and symptoms about children and what they go through, we can contact someone who might or who might be working with children and know that we are all getting much, much better at that, but children often still overlooked or people, you know, forget to or don't know how to engage with children about it. So we want to talk to some experts, easily done, they are available. How can we say yes rather than no, I thought, I know that nobody said that, but it's kind of like, how do we get rid of barriers and go, yep, sure, let me see what I can do and who do I need to collaborate with to get holistic care. And one of the things, I think Laura, I'm borrowing that from you in your group, you said we might not be family violence specialists. We might not be trauma specialists. We might not be specialists in child abuse, in sexual abuse. We all have a role in it though, don't we? And some of us in the state of Victoria, for example, we're legislated to assess for it. So it is actually by law now that people have to have a role. They eventually, you know, we all have a role and we even have a role outside of work. I have a role with my neighbor who I supported a couple of years ago when she experienced family violence. I felt like that was my responsibility to support her and her little boys. But we certainly at work have a role to respond, to engage, to respond and support. And maybe that's something we, amongst many, many other things that we can all take from today. Sounds like from your discussions in your groups though, that everybody was pretty, you know, pretty, I fade with that. And of course already has taken responsibility. So thank you so much. I'm gonna bring us to a close. Time flies when you're having fabulous feedback and conversations. Thanks so much to the four of you. I dobbed you all in. And I'm so glad that you said, yes, I really enjoyed working with you. And thanks for doing a brilliant job at facilitating. Thanks to the mental health professional network to not shy away from looking at family violence and mental health. And as I say that, I can feel myself getting quite emotional. And I was emotional early on and that just shows after 35 years, this still affects me. And I'm really glad that we're all here today. So thank you audience also to coming to this session today to not shying away to wanting to engage and to engaging so well in this collab lab as it's called. We really hope you got a lot out of it and looks like you did. And thank you so much for contributing everybody. Now, just a couple of reminders before we close this session that you can continue this discussion in a networking hub from two to two 30 this afternoon. To do that, you just need to navigate back to to the network hub and go to the lobby and Emily will come in in a moment and might just say some more things about that. There's also guided mindfulness session beginning in 15 minutes. This is even though we're just on the screen, we are part of community and there are other things going on this afternoon for you. And you might also not want to miss this evening's plenary and panel discussion, the nexus between climate change and mental health, which of course, there's a huge connection. We know that we've also probably all experienced some of that as well. That is at 6 p.m. Melbourne Sydney Hobart time. Can I thank you all for being here today and I've really appreciated chairing this session. And before we go, I'll hand over to Emily, the trustee tech support here today who will talk to you about filling out please a survey. And I'll see you around Australia at some other stage hopefully.