Christian Porter is the new Minister for Social Services and holds responsibility for chronically underfunded family violence prevention and response services.
Can you send Minister Porter an email at [email protected] and urge him to make full funding of family violence services a personal priority in the budget negotiations that are going on right now?
Tips on what to include in your email
You should send your email to Minister Porter via [email protected].
The more personal the email, the more powerful it will be, so include your own thoughts and experiences - but here's a structure to help:
- Introduce yourself - Mention where you live and what you do. If you voted for the government at the last election you might want to mention this.
- Explain the reason you're writing - Explain why you care about this issue. If it has affected you or someone you know, mention this. Then explain that you're writing because you're concerned that the federal government are leaving women in danger, by failing to provide full funding for the services that support women to live free from danger, and the primary prevention programs prevent violence in the future.
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Urge Minister Porter to ensure full funding for the family violence services in his portfolio in the next budget. That includes services like:
- Specialist domestic and family violence services - these women’s services provide a unique, specialist understanding of family violence and of risk assessment and management for women and children affected by family violence. To escape danger, it’s critical that women and children in need can get 24-hour specialist, accessible and culturally safe integrated support. But right now they can't. For example, in Victoria police make 70,000 attendances at family violence incidents, but outreach services are only funded to respond to 6,000.
- Men's behaviour change programs - these work with men who use violent and controlling behaviour to prevent and minimise the harm of family violence. These programs are calling for an additional $56 million of funding to expand programs and ensure national minimum standards and accreditation.
- Primary prevention - needed to address the community attitudes that lead to violence. They need additional funding for a range of programs including early childhood interventions and respectful relationship education in schools.
- Thank the Minister for his time.
Once you've written your email, please forward it to the Fair Agenda team via [email protected] so we can keep track of all the powerful messages being sent to the Minister on this issue!