The Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence in Queensland, chaired by the Honourable Dame Quentin Bryce AD CVO, undertook a comprehensive review of domestic and family violence in Queensland. The ‘Not Now, Not Ever: Putting an End to Domestic and Family Violence in Queensland’ report (the Report) provided 140 recommendations to inform a long-term vision and strategy for Government and the community to end domestic and family violence in Queensland. A key theme of the Report is building an effective and integrated service system, which requires that front line responders as well as a broad range of mainstream service providers are appropriately skilled and work to best practice standards. The Report also focused heavily on driving cultural change via various means. This includes workplace strategies to raise awareness of and responsiveness to, employees who are directly or indirectly affected by Domestic and Family Violence (DFV), and through broader community leadership.

The Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women (the Department), through the Office for Women and Violence Prevention, led responsibility for implementing several recommendations from the Report. This includes initiatives related to the capacity and capability of the funded DFV service providers, including sexual assault and women’s health service providers (the Sector). The Department was tasked with establishing a coordinated workforce capacity and capability building service (the Service). The establishment and implementation of the Service sought to deliver the workforce cultural change required to implement the Report recommendations.

TSA Advisory were engaged by the Department to complete the “Strategic commission for the establishment of domestic and family violence Workforce Capacity and Capability Building Services”. The key objective from this engagement was to implement a viable commissioned Workforce Capacity and Capability Building Service for the DFV Sector. This objective was achieved through a number of deliverables and outputs which underpinned this commissioning process. As the transaction managers, TSA implemented commissioning strategies for state-wide engagement with government and non-government agencies working with people who experience or use domestic and family violence, and capability development organisations such as NGOs, TAFE and Higher Education; to facilitate market engagement and ensure innovative proposals for the Service.

Through an interactive tender process, including codesign activities, the Service was viewed as a unique partnership between the Healing Foundation and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). The partnership brings together two organisations with complementary skills, experience and strong networks across the broad human services industry in Queensland.

The Service, at its core, will deliver experience and non-aligned leadership with the capacity to bring reform to the sector by providing:

• Workforce planning (i.e. Workforce Strategies informing requirements for system change)
• Workforce development (i.e. accredited and nonaccredited training)
• Workforce support (i.e. solutions to respond to issues such as succession planning and retention) to the Sector.