Ballarat Local Area Commander Inspector Dan Davison estimated nearly 60 per cent of today’s policing related to family violence incidents.

“Family violence (and) threats of violence creates terror and destroys the normal family environment,” he said.

“No family violence incident should be considered minor. Police respond to reports of everything from verbal threats to serious injury, assaults and murders, all linked to family violence.”

Victoria Police attended 76,500 family violence incidents from July 2016 until June 2017 – equating to one incident every three and a half minutes.

While December recorded more family violence incidents than any other month with 7231.

Of the affected family members across this period, 74.7 per cent were female and of these females, 61.7 per cent were aged 20-44 years old.

Inspector Davison described the Victoria Police statewide figures as terrible.

He said Ballarat’s Family Violence Unit’s core priority was to ensure the welfare and safety of survivors and their children.

But, while the Western Region Family Violence Perpetrator Intervention Strategy continued a victim-centered response, there was a greater focus on supporting perpetrators to change their behaviour.

This included face-to-face encouragement of perpetrators to engage with services and secondary referrals for associated issues.

Inspector Davison said many of the early misconceptions were “slowly being eroded away”, such as family violence was not limited to people within lower socio-economic demographics.

While the reporting of family violence continued to increase through public awareness such as campaigns and commercials.

“… I believe that this will continue for some time before we see it plateau,” Inspector Davison said.

But he said family violence was still an “all too private matter” that needed to continually be made public. 

“It’s about education (people, community, perpetrators) and it’s also about early intervention and ensuring that affected family members, victims and perpetrators remain linked in and engaging with our external family violence support agencies.”

White Ribbon Day was a chance for the community to show it would not commit, excuse or remain silent on violence against women.

“We all have a role to play in changing the attitudes that create a culture where violence against women and children is trivialised and even encouraged in some instances,” Inspector Davison said.

“We have to ensure that our children understand what it means to have respectful relationships.”

On Friday morning, the Ballarat Family Violence Unit attended the White Ribbon Day breakfast at Ballarat Regional Soccer Facility.

Sergeant Chris Hardiman was inducted as White Ribbon ambassador, after undertaking a training course at the Sydney-based headquarters.

The state government has opened its $1.6 million grant package for intervention programs to make family violence perpetrators accountable.

Profit and not-for-profit groups will be able to apply for up to $400,000 in funding to pilot new interventions for perpetrators aged over 18 years in Victoria.

Attorney-General Martin Pakula said the grants would help identify new ways of tackling family violence and hold perpetrators to account for their behaviour.

The grants form part of a $7.9 million package delivered through the Victorian Budget 2017/18.

The package is designed to implement a key recommendation from the Royal Commission into Family Violence, which is to trial and evaluate new perpetrator interventions within the justice system.

Applications for the grants are now open and close on Wednesday, December 20, at 5pm, with funded programs to be completed by June 2019.

For more information on the grants program visit the Department of Justice and Regulation website at justice.vic.gov.au/pi-grants.

New laws introduced nationwide are set to increase protection of family violence victims.

Under the National Domestic Violence Order Scheme, domestic violence orders issued in any Australian state or territory will automatically be recognised nationwide.

This means victims will no longer need to register a domestic violence order in another state or territory for it to be enforceable.

The scheme takes effect from Saturday - the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and White Ribbon Day.