Hosted by the Ballarat and District Aboriginal Co-operative (BADAC) on Thursday, November 16, the WRISC AGM detailed the successes and programs of the previous year and looked to the future of the organisation.

WRISC President Julie McMahon said  with the groups expansion and the move to more comfortable office space in 2017, they will be able to expand their services to support new a emerging communities. 

“We are developing our strategic plan for the next four years and LGBTIQ relationships will be one of our major areas of new work, we have our core work but we need to really look at that area,” she said. 

“Often you have, in a male female relationship, the typical perpetrator is male however in some of our LGBTIQ relationships there could be a female perpetrator and as we work with females it raises challenges.”

As well as working with the LGBTIQ community, WRISC will be branching out into other areas of the community that experience family vioelce including multicultural, differently abled, and aged communities. 

Ms McMahon said the expansion of services will not take away from their core work assisting woman and children in the region affected by family violence. 

“We can’t forget our primary focus is with the numbers and women and children are the most adversely affected by family violence.”

It was noted more people that ever were self-referring to the service and Ms McMahon said it’s important WRISC is visible to the community and those that need their support. 

“We have this dilemma about whether our organisation should not advertise so women have a safe place to go but we are moving to the idea that we have to be out there saying we are fighting for women and children and not hide ourselves away.”