The vigil was presented online by journalist and author Jess Hill, and featured guest speakers including Survivor Advocate Geraldine Bilston.
Geraldine Bilston joined Monash Health’s 2019 International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women event as a panellist. At the event she shared her personal experience with family violence and explained the opportunity health service employees have in and giving people confidence that when they are ready to leave there are services designed to support them.
For Geraldine it was conversations with a social worker while she was in hospital after giving birth which first planted the seed that there was support available should she choose to leave her violent relationship. It was two years later when she made the move, but the earlier conversations gave her the confidence and understanding that there would be help.
The Safe Steps vigil comes at a time when family violence has been prevalent in the media, and people in our community accessing support networks is at an all-time high. In the year to December 31, 2020, family violence incidents increased by 9.4 per-cent from 84,543 to 92,521 the highest number on record.
At Monash Health we remain committed to providing a supportive and non-judgemental response to employees and patients impacted by family violence. Support for employees includes practical measures such as family violence leave and flexible work options. Learn more about this on our recently update employee webpage ‘Respectful Relationships and family violence’ or see the Manager’s guide to supporting our employees, which is available on PROMPT and on the intranet.
If you are responding to a patient impacted by family violence, there are a range of resources available on PROMPT, such as our family violence clinical guideline, family violence intervention order and other related orders procedure, suspected child abuse procedure and family violence and child information sharing procedure. These documents are available on PROMPT.
Our family violence team can assist by providing education which can be booked via latte or by contacting the team directly via: familyviolenceeducation@monashhealth.org.
Crisis support is available via 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) and Safe Steps (1800 015 188). As always, if you are in immediate danger, call 000.
Approved by Katrina Nankervis