Royal Women's Hospital Family Violence Workplace Support Program - ANMF

Royal Women’s Hospital
Family Violence Workplace
    Support Program

            Georgia Shepherd, Employee Relations Manager
                                      21 September 2017

Context
•    RWH has a long history of leadership in identifying
     and responding to violence as a women’s health
     issue
•    Our work requires us to not only respond to patients
     experiencing FV, but our workforce too
•    2500 employees, 90% female
•    Leadership team and workforce committed to
     women’s health and PVAW

Our FV program is supported by
 these
•   The Women’s Strategic Plan 2016 – 2020
•   People Strategy 2016-2020
•   Violence Against Women Strategy 2017-2021
•   Strengthening Hospital Responses to Family Violence
    Project
•   White Ribbon Accreditation
•   Organisational culture and values

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INTEGRATED RESPONSES TO PVAW

Enablers
•    CEO and Executive commitment
•    Workforce committed to women’s health, social
     model of health and gender equity
•    Various strategic plans
•    Access to family violence/VAW specialists

Challenges
•    Deciding from an extensive list of things we could do
     and then finding the time and resources to do it
•    Processing paid FV leave while maintaining
     confidentiality

…So what did we do?

Key components of the program

       POLICY &   ONLINE RESOURCES   TRAINING
     PROCEDURES

FV intranet page

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Our policy & procedure
•   Acknowledges the devastating impact of FV and that FV is a violation of human
    rights
•   Acknowledges that anyone can experience FV and that it is a gendered crime
•   Creates a safe place for disclosures and empowers the individual in decision
    making
•   Defines family violence
•   Paid FV leave for full and part time staff
•   Workplace flexibility options
•   Safety at work planning
•   Confidentiality and options for people to talk to

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We try to make it simple

                DO                                  DON’T
   Be supportive
                                           Provide advice or counselling
   Be non-judgemental
   Know your work place policies and      Try to ‘fix it’
    procedures
   Refer to staff intranet                Try to find out details

                                           Discuss personal issues in public
                                            areas

                                           Force the staff member to disclose

This is what we ask staff to do

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We make lots of noise about
•
    FV
     CEO presentations at staff and leadership forums
•    Newsletters
•    Grand rounds
•    Family violence policy and procedure launch
•    Events:
            The clothesline Project
            Go Orange/Staff BBQ
            Handed out material
            Staff forums
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White Ribbon Day 2015
•    Grand Round – Prof David Watters President of RACS -
     speaking to the final RACS report ‘A Call for Action on
     Discrimination, Bullying and Sexual Harassment in Surgery’

White Ribbon Night 2016
Grand Round – Phil Cleary

White Ribbon Day 2016
Ground Round – Professor Kelsey Hegarty
“The Wicked Problem of Family Violence”

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Week without violence
The Clothesline Project

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16 Days of Activisim
Go Orange Day – orange themed team
events

16 Days of Activism
Thumbprint tree

Other events
•    SHRFV statewide forums
•    Nov 2016 Grand Round – International guest
     speaker Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno from WHO
•    Presentations at quarterly leadership forums
•    Presentations of domestic and international
     conferences, various external presentations
•    Hosted international WHO expert advisers forum
•    Promotion of program to other hospitals

I think these are important….
•   Provision of information (especially for
    managers)
•   A culture of safety for disclosure
•   Evaluation and more work to do