Addressing the legal need of migrant and refugee women experiencing family violence
Online processes can be invaluable to making services more accessible for people, but for communities where the primary language isn’t that of the one used to create the tool, new barriers can be unearthed.
Northern Community Legal Centre (NCLC), in partnership with Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights (AMWCHR), sought to investigate the experience of migrant and refugee women when applying for an online Family Violence Intervention Order (FVIO). The Barriers to Access Research Project has released findings and recommendations concerning the application process and barriers to accessing justice.
Is technology making family violence protections more accessible?
During the COVID pandemic, industries across Victoria were forced to seek new service delivery processes that reduced face-to-face interaction. The legal and justice sector was not exempt, and many services were moved to remote delivery. Of particular concern to NCLC and AMWCHR was the move to make FVIO applications a predominantly online form submittal process with very little support from the courts.
“We had been tracking the FVIO online application form for quite some time,” Jenni Smith, CEO of NCLC explained, as NCLC’s catchment of Melbourne’s Northwest has extremely high rates of family violence, alongside a high migrant population. “We looked at the data from the instance in 2020 when that form moved online, and we saw a significant drop of FVIO applications in our community.”
“There was a definite shift once that form moved online,” agreed Dr Kate Hammond, Research Manager at AMWCHR, regarding the change in administrative load the organisation experienced. Over 90% of AMWCHR’s family violence casework clients require in-language services, which can include assistance with FVIO applications. The increased demand for this support was felt by AMWCHR’s casework team.
With these concerns of a legal need not being met, NCLC and AMWCHR partnered on a research project to collect information and explore the issue. With funding from a VLF Grant, they investigated the experience of refugee and migrant women when accessing FVIOs.
Ensuring cultural integrity of Barriers to Access
The Barriers to Access Research Project investigated the range of process issues and barriers faced by migrant and refugee women when applying to the courts for FVIO in-person and online forms. Insights from 30 practitioners from 11 services was gained through interviews and focus groups, as well as the lived-experience through 10 client interviews.
Jenni Smith emphasised the importance of building “cultural integrity” for the project through a diverse Advisory Committee. As refugee and migrant women come from incredibly diverse backgrounds, the project required professional input from across the legal, family violence and community sectors. The Committee was made up of representatives from 12 stakeholder and cultural organisations, including Arabic Welfare, Court Services Victoria, the Salvation Army, The Orange Door, Uniting, FiB Consultants, and The University of Melbourne. “We couldn’t have proceeded [with Barriers to Access] without that cultural expertise,” Jenni Smith said. Further perspectives from multicultural organisations were gathered through interviews and focus groups.
The project was granted full ethics approval by the Justice Human Research Ethics Committee. VLF’s Dr Hugh McDonald provided guidance at the beginning of this process, which required NCLC and AMWCHR to create new research tools including research questions, participant information sheets and data management plans.
Findings and recommendations from the research were developed with support from the Advisory Committee, Professor Heather Douglas from The University of Melbourne and Dr Hugh McDonald.
Courts and police “passed around” migrant and refugee women experiencing family violence
Barriers to Access found significant service gaps for migrant and refugee women when applying to Court Services for FVIOs in person and navigating online forms.
The project found that language barriers make online forms for migrant and refugee women inaccessible, with language that is jargonistic and an online interface that is difficult to use. Due to these barriers, many women are prevented from independently engaging in the application process. Instead, they require assistance to access the FVIO system, which falls on already time-poor community service providers to support them through the online process.
The result of this is what Jenni Smith identifies as a “sectoral voice of frustration”. The project found that in some instances, courts, police and sector services refused to provide assistance to migrant and refugee victims/survivors in their FVIO application process. This responsibility is being felt in the community sector. “Community lawyers, workers at multicultural services, case managers at family violence services; everyone is overloaded”.
And that’s if the victims/survivors can make it to community services after being “passed around”. The research also uncovered that the FVIO process was so difficult for migrant and refugee victims/survivors to navigate that they were disengaging from the entire process. Other detrimental legal and social impacts included increased stress and delays in receiving legal protection.
Building shared advocacy and partnerships to improve family violence services
As a result of the research findings, NCLC and AMWCHR have put forward some key recommendations to address the service gaps for migrant and refugee women applying for family violence protection. Addressed to the courts, the recommendations ask for updated policies and processes regarding:
- a review of the online FVIO application form regarding accessibility, language and user interface
- consistent provision of language support and allowing for adequate time for victims/survivors to complete forms at the court
- investment in interpreting services to ensure quality and accessibility
- additional funding to the family violence and legal sector to provide support for FVIO applications
The project continues beyond the report’s launch, with NCLC and AMWCHR collaborating on their shared advocacy approach to promote the findings and recommendations of the research.
“The project partnership strengthened the relationship between the two organisations and subsequently created more efficient referral pathways and cross-organisation training,” Tania McKenna, Partnerships & Community Development Manager at NCLC, reflected on how the project led to learnings for both organisations and the broader sector. “This project not only produced quality research findings, but strengthened partnerships across the specialist family violence sector and community legal centre”.
More information
You can read the key findings and recommendations of Barriers to Access: Migrant and Refugee Women’s experiences of the online family violence intervention order process, or the full report.
Dr Kate Hammond and Tania McKenna will discuss the project findings in our upcoming Research Network on July 18th, register now.
The Barriers to Access Research project was funded by a Victoria Law Foundation Grant. If you have a project addressing a legal need that we could help to fund, explore our Grants program.