Supporting the Primary Care Response to Family Domestic and Sexual Violence Pilot

Get Involved

It is anticipated that full time GPs can see as many as 5 patients experiencing violence each week. Family, domestic, and sexual violence are often hidden from others in the community.

The silent nature of abuse means that it can be hard to have the conversation about abuse. Victim-survivors of violence and abuse are more likely to tell their GPs about their experiences more than any other professional group.

Therefore, primary care providers play a critical role in supporting people who are experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence.

The Supporting the Primary Care sector response to Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence pilot here in SA will give primary care providers the tools to get their patients the right support at the right time. If you would like to be involved with this work, there are a range of opportunities to be involved for primary care providers, representatives from the FDSV response sectors, and those with lived experience of FDSV.

Needs Assessment - Closed

The FDSV Project team spoke to people with lived experience of FDSV, primary care providers, and representatives from the FDSV response sectors across regional and metropolitan South Australia through one-on-one conversations, focus groups, and surveys.

The team aimed to understand how primary care providers currently support their patients’ experiencing violence and where there might be gaps or ways that this support could be improved. The team also learned how primary care and specialist FDSV response services currently work together and how this could be improved.

The outcomes of the needs assessment will be published in a report on the respective Adelaide PHN and Country SA PHN websites.

Advisory Panels - Closed but may reopen in future

Two advisory panels have been put together to support the work of this project. 

The first, a GP Advisory Panel represents the primary care sector across South Australia and will advise the project team on matters related to all phases of the project, including collaborative design and implementation of the model.

The GP Advisory Panel will assist the project team to effectively engage with and support General Practice to ultimately build their capacity to recognise, respond to, and refer patients who may be at risk of or who are experiencing violence or abuse.

The GP Advisory Panel will be expected to provide general advice regarding the primary care sector, whilst also advocating for their own communities. Recruitment for the GP Advisory Panel has closed at this time but may re-open in future if more members are needed. 

The second, a Lived Experience Advisory Panel, has been convened by LELAN to shape and co-design how responses to victim-survivor disclosures and links to additional support can be enhanced and expanded through this model.

To centre victim-survivors in building the supports they need and use, LELAN will be convening this Panel and are additionally contributing to partnership and decision-making processes.

LELAN is the independent peak body in South Australia by, for and with people with lived experience of mental distress, social issues or injustice. LELAN’s systemic advocacy targets the mental health and social sectors in South Australia, whilst their thought leadership and expertise on lived experience expertise and leadership is borderless.

At this time, recruitment for the Lived Experience Advisory Panel has closed but may re-open in future if more members are needed.

Collaborative Design and Consultation

A series of community consultations and collaborative design activities occurred between October and December. These activities were an opportunity for individuals living or working in the two pilot regions to take part in the design of the pilot model. 

Pilot Regions (boundaries to be defined through collaborative design activities) 

• Country SA: a hub and spoke model with physical sites located in Whyalla and Port Augusta, and outreach to surrounding areas 
• Adelaide: Salisbury and Playford LGAs 

The collaborative design activities aimed to capture the views and experiences of those who were most affected by the model. This included: 

• People with lived experience of FDSV (including adult survivors of CSA), 
• Primary care providers (GPs, practice nurses, practice managers and anybody else who shapes the primary care environment), 
• Organisations who provide services to people experiencing FDSV. 

In addition, activities were catered towards communities that are heavily affected by violence and abuse and often experience inadequate access to acceptable services. This includes those from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, multicultural communities, LGBTIQA+ communities, and people living with disability communities. Specialist facilitators from TACSI, Purple Orange, NINI and LELAN were engaged to make sure the activities in this phase were culturally safe, accessible and inclusive, and trauma informed.  

Commissioning and Implementation of the Model

Applications are open for General Practices to participate in the Supporting the Primary Care Response to Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence pilot project.

The pilot project aims to provide strategies for the primary care work force to Recognise, Respond to, and Refer patients experiencing FDSV and CSA.

Participating practices will get access to specialised online training suitable for clinicians and all staff, as well as a dedicated triage, referral and support service.

An information session will be held on Thursday 10 April to provide information about the application process, what’s involved, and the benefits for participating. To attend, register here.

If you’d like to be kept informed, please feel free to reach out to: [email protected]