Supporting retention across the worker journey
Practitioners are more likely to remain in the sector if they feel fulfilled and supported in their roles.
This means providing roles that are satisfying and well-supported. These roles should have manageable workloads, strong leadership, and good job security and career prospects.
We must also continue to focus on workers’ health, safety and wellbeing and the role that organisations can play.
At the entry level, we will improve the experience for new recruits. We will do this by developing resources to support onboarding and work readiness across all community services roles. We will work with relevant peak bodies and other stakeholders to develop and encourage take-up of these resources.
Once they are in the sector, practitioners need broad career options across different service types. This includes different roles and levels of seniority.
This is particularly important for practitioners who want to continue to improve their frontline practice, but who do not want to move into management.
We will examine what stops workers from moving to different parts of the community services sector. This includes movement into and out of specialised services. These include ACCOs, services supporting people with disability and services for the LGBTQIA+ community.
We will seek to formally recognise and value experiences in different service types which could improve the workers’ career experience within community services and boost retention within the sector.
Supporting cultural and lived experience
Many people working in or looking to enter the family violence and sexual assault sectors have their own lived experience of family and sexual violence.
The lived experience pathway under the Mandatory Minimum Qualifications Policy provides further impetus to do more in this area. We will build on existing work to develop new guidance on recruiting and supporting staff with lived experience. The final new action in this focus area will involve scoping initiatives to embed culturally safe and inclusive practice in the workplace.
Leaders who understand the value of embedding an organisational approach to intersectionality can enable their workforces to be more inclusive in their practice. This can result in services becoming more accessible to all members of the community
Case study: Specialist Family Violence Workforce Project
Under the first RAP, the Specialist Family Violence Workforce Project gained a deeper understanding of the jobs that currently exist in the family violence response sector. The project was done in partnership with the Workforce Innovation and Development Institute (WIDI). It found that:
- the workforce does not always align with organisational charts and position descriptions
- the structure and description of similar positions are not consistent across organisations
- position descriptions need to improve to achieve consistency and good recruitment practice.
The project mapped the job families and core job functions required to deliver specialist family violence services. The second RAP will extend this work. It will help design the future state of the family violence workforce. This will involve:
- understanding the current remuneration, staffing break-down and numbers across the current workforce
- improving consistency in job classifications, roles and functions within organisations and across the system.
Table 2: Focus area 2 – new actions and continuing activities
| New actions | Commencement |
|---|---|
| 1.1 Identify ways to increase workforce mobility between the family violence and sexual assault sectors, other non-government community services, and government-delivered services. | 2024–25 |
| 1.2 Explore options to support onboarding and work readiness for workers across service types, in consultation with sector stakeholders. | 2024–25 |
| 1.3 Develop guidance on recruiting and supporting staff with lived experience in the family violence and sexual assault sectors. | 2024–25 |
| 1.4 Scope initiatives that support organisations to embed culturally safe, inclusive and equitable workplace policies and practices. | 2023–24 |
Continuing activities:
| 2023–24 |
Updated