Police and domestic violence co-responder model ‘set up to fail’ due to ‘pathetic’ funding allocation

A groundbreaking trial partnering Territory cops with domestic violence experts was ‘set up to fail’ due to a lack of funding, the coroner has heard.

Gender-based violence specialist Chay Brown outside the Darwin Local Court following her testimony on Thursday.

A groundbreaking trial partnering police with family violence experts was “set up to fail”, with funding models sabotaging any hope for success during an epidemic of violence in the Red Centre, the Territory Coroner has heard.

Coroner Elizabeth Armitage has spent four months conducting Australia’s largest ever coronial inquest into domestic violence, by exploring the lives of four Aboriginal women killed by the men they loved.

On Thursday, gender-based violence specialist Chay Brown told Ms Armitage a three-year pilot program to pair victim support organisations with frontline police in Alice Springs had been sabotaged by “inadequate” funding.

Internal government documents tendered at the inquest revealed the original co-responder pilot would have been rolled out in Alice Springs and Darwin, with two specialist domestic violence workers to partner with police officers and intelligence analysts, a police officer to support the on-call family violence worker and a project co-ordinator.

Dr Brown said the original price tag of this five-year pilot was more than a million dollars, and was modelled off successful mental health co-responders programs in the Territory.

Yet the approved domestic violence action plan did not allocate any Territory cash to the program, saying it would have to find funding within the existing police budget and a grant from the Commonwealth Government.

NT Police has previously told the Coroner after the federal funding runs out, the agency would provide an additional $350,000 for the next 12-months.

But Dr Brown said this would not even cover the wages of two suitably qualified specialist domestic violence social workers, who would be exposing themselves to significant levels of trauma.

“Everyone was talking about this co-response model, as being exciting, as being a solution — and those are true,” she said.

“But currently, it doesn‘t exist and it never will exist and never will be effective unless it’s funded adequately, resourced adequately.

“There's not enough money attached to it and it’s been set up to fail.”

Dr Brown said the cuts meant a similar program could not be run in Darwin, while the program had no money to compensate Tangentyere Council for the programs it runs to engage with perpetrators, or even evaluate the success of the pilot.

Counsel for the families of one of the Central Australian women, Phillip Boulten SC, called this funding “pathetic” and a hollow gesture to the frontline responders to domestic violence.

Ms Armitage — who has previously heard Territory Families alone had up to $22m in unspent wages due to a 39.8 per cent vacancy rate in their Child Protection unit — rhetorically asked if “there was any unspent money that could be redirected to the model that is supported by the agencies in Alice Springs?”.

Originally published as Police and domestic violence co-responder model ‘set up to fail’ due to ‘pathetic’ funding allocation