Service provider for Broome One Stop Domestic Violence Hub announced

Broome’s promised One Stop Domestic Violence Hub has found its service provider in the Men’s Outreach Service Aboriginal Corporation who will partner with other local Aboriginal corporations to run the much-needed service.

Family Outreach Service, an arm of MOSAC, will partner with Anglicare WA to co-lead an alliance of specialist service providers, including Nirrumbuk Aboriginal Corporation, Jalygurr Guwan Aboriginal Corporation, Broome CIRCLE and Legal Aid WA.

The Broome Hub will provide a range of specialist supports for people experiencing family and domestic violence, including advocacy, counselling, legal assistance, and support for children, from a single location.

It will also provide family and domestic violence outreach services in Derby and Bidyadanga.

Interim services are set to commence in the second half of 2024, despite originally being announced to be delivered in late 2023.

In the meantime, Family Outreach Service and Anglicare WA will provide interim Hub services while work is carried out on a purpose-built property that will deliver full services.

Family Outreach Service chief executive Peter Mitchell said the service was pleased to be leading the vital community initiative.

“We take this responsibility and opportunity extremely seriously, and will be working closely with cultural leaders, women and children with lived experience, stakeholders, and the broader community including Bidyadanga and Derby through the Broome Hub outreach service,” he said.

“Our leadership of the Family and Domestic Violence Hub will build on the valuable programs that Family Outreach Service currently deliver to support women and children experiencing family and domestic violence, through our Strong Women, Strong Families Program and Youth Services Programs, and will strengthen our whole of family approach to family and domestic violence through our family support programs and Change Em Ways, our Indigenous Men’s Behavioural Change Family and Domestic Violence Program.

“We will also draw on the experience of Anglicare WA which has also been delivering family and domestic violence services for many years in the Kimberley.”

The Broome Hub will be the last of four hubs to be delivered in WA, despite the Kimberley recording the highest rates of domestic violence offences in the State.

As of 2022-23, the rate of family assaults in the region is more than 16.5 times that of the metropolitan area, with 11,366 family assaults per 100,000 people compared to just 682 in the metro area.

The Kimberley also recorded 23 times the rate of serious family assault than the metro area.