1. Thanks…
Acknowledge the traditional owners of the land where we are meeting and pay our respects to any elders who are here today. 1

2. We would like to pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet today, acknowledge their elders, past, present and emerging and acknowledge the important role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people play in addressing violence against women, children and men in our community.
After acknowledgement say..
Today we will take you through a project that is looking at the link between family violence and gambling 2

3. Project objectives
A prevention project focusing on the link between family violence and gambling, with a view to reducing harm from gambling and to increase the safety of women experiencing violence from male partners in households where there is also harm from gambling.
Aims:
To increase awareness about the link between family violence and gambling-related harm with service providers and within the community.
To strengthen: the relationships between the family violence and problem gambling sectors; risk assessment mechanisms; and referral pathways and service delivery.
As a women’s health service we have a focus on women as victims and men as perpetrators
We did not focus on either the perpetrator or victim as the gamblers as we know that with problem gambling its about half/half. 3

4. The Project Key partners: Women's Health In the North
Women’s Heath East
North East Primary Care Partnership
Funded through the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation (VRGF) from July 2014 to June 2017.
Based in northern and eastern metropolitan regions of Melbourne.
We (Women’s Health Services) are 2 of 9 regional NFP women's health promotion orgs, each working across 7 LGAs.
WHIN and WHE each aim to strengthen women’s health, safety and wellbeing by investing in equality and wellbeing for women. As well as other strategic goals, our 2 orgs share 3 common priorities of:
PVAW
Sexual and Reproductive Health
Gender Equity for Health Outcomes 4

5. Why Do This Work?
Family violence is three times more likely to occur in families in which there is significant harm from gambling than in families in which there is no gambling related harm1
A lack of a gendered understanding of the link between family violence and harm from gambling
1. Dowling, N. A., Ewin, C., Youssef, G. J., Thomas, S. A., & Jackson, A. C. Problem gambling and family violence: Findings from a population representative community study. Manuscript in preparation
No causal link, but where there is harm from gambling there is often FV.
We think of gambling as a reinforcing factor. But it does not drive violence in an of itself. Work is framed by CTS framework
There is, however, a lack of gendered research in this area, which means that we do not have the complete understanding of what this link looks like, how it plays out in women’s lives. Types of FV associated with gambling has also not been the subject of research, however anecdotal evidence from Gambler’s Help practitioners suggests that financial abuse is a common form of violence experienced by women living in families in which there is harm from gambling.
But what we do know is this…
many ways in which this co-occurrence of gambling and family violence play a role in the lives of women
People with gambling problems are more likely than those without gambling problems to be both victims and perpetrators of intimate partner violence (IPV).
Over 1/3 of people with gambling problems report being the victims of physical Intimate Partner Violence (38%) or perpetrators of physical IPV (37%)
Over half of people with gambling problems (56%) report perpetrating physical violence against their children.
**Note that new findings from Harm Study reveal that 85% of G-R harm– to self and others – is associated with low and moderate risk gambling. Also identified 7 dimensions of harm…. 5

6. Community and Sector-wide Project Activities
Cross-sector engagement and consultations to inform project activities
Community education and awareness raising within community and gambling and family violence sectors
We began the project consulting across a range of sectors including: FV, GH (both the therapeutic counsellors and financial counsellors), children services, non GH financial counselling services and others in human services organizations who see clients experiencing harm from gambling and family violence to ask about what their experiences of the link was.
At the same time we undertook awareness raising activities, with services in our regions, including a public forum. 6

7. The awareness raising was not just about the link but also about the need for gendered research into this area and for responses to clients to be mindful of the way in which gender impact on how women experience gambling harm.
Last year we presented a poster which considered ways in which a gender lens (feminist FV lens) can enhance research in this area and expand our understanding of the impacts on women when both FV and gambling are occurring as well as understanding understand why women are gambling and if related to FV what this looks like and what can we do to address this. 7

8. Project Activities: Professional Development
Professional development - family violence and Gambler’s Help sectors
We have trained nearly 100 counsellors across Victoria
Working with No to Violence
Working with different therapeutic and response frameworks: women and child first, safety as priority versus gambling as an addiction
One of the key pieces of work that came out of our consultations was professional development work with GH counselors, both therapeutic and financial.
What we heard in the consultations was a need for training for GH counsellors in how to respond to women experiencing family violence as well as training in responding to men who use violence
Training is a two day training
1 full day of IFV
1 day of how to work with women and how to work with men. No to Violence working with us.
The training was about us taking counsellors who work within on particular frame work, an addiction framework and ‘as our trainer puts it’ flipping the switch to a FV framework.
Each framework suits the works that its done. It was our job to take the counsellors through this process of identifying when the issue to be prioritized in the counselling is women and children’s safety and how does that work in practice.
So what are we doing now? 8

9. Current Policy Environment
In 2015 a number of key policy documents, frameworks and research that helped to Inform our thinking and supported what we had been doing.
Already at this conference people have referred to CtS and RCFV. These were important as validated the work we were doing. CTS strengthened our approach to the prevention of violence against women, reinforcing gender inequality as the core driver of violence against women. The Royal Commission recognized gambling as a coexisting factor with family violence, which validated our position within the gambling sector to do this work.
The third document that has informed our work over the past year is the is Assessing Gambling Harm in Victoria : A public Health Perspective also funded by the VRGF/
Funded as a prevention project – but we didn’t have two compatible frameworks to locate our work in. As a women’s health organisation we naturally reverted to working within a PVAW Framework
When we began this work there was no gambling public health framework that we could work within. – as opposed the violence against women prevention framework where at the time we had the VicHealth framework
As Women’s Health services, we have a commitment to Prevention and elimination and it doesn’t necessarily sit well with the gambling sectors framework of raising awareness of what happens if you gamble too much and treatment for gamblers and their affected others– which is a harm minimization approach 9 9

10. A snap shot for those of you now working in the prevention field
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11. Project Activities: Current Focus
Cross-sector engagement and consultations to inform project activities
Community education and awareness raising within community and gambling and family violence sectors
Professional development - family violence and Gambler’s Help sectors
A digital resource, focussing on the prevention of violence against women and prevention of harm from gambling
Working to influence policy at all levels of government with a particular focus on local councils
What a we currently doing??
As you can see we are still focusing on awareness raising, and delivery of professional development
The training has been going really well and we have tailored it to meet the needs of the trainees, for example looking at financial abuse, particularly with the financial counselors,
You will see at the bottom of this slide that we have now included two more activities. The making of a digital resource and resource guide and policy work.
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12. The link between EGMs and family violence
There is also a direct correlation between the density of poker machines in an area and rates of family incidents and family violence incidents involving police*.
In Victorian postcodes with no EGMs:
20% fewer family incidents per 10,000 population; and
30% fewer domestic-violence assaults per 10,000.
when compared with postcodes with 75 electronic gaming machines per 10,000.
* i.e. certain events only - not representative of the full range of violence included under the Family Violence Protection Act (2008) Markham et al (2016)
The other key piece of information that was published this year was research into the link between EGMs and family violence police stats.
Francis Markham’s recent research used annual postcode-level data, in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.
He describes the association between police-recorded domestic violence and electronic gaming machine accessibility at the Victorian postcode level. Police-recorded family incidents per 10,000 persons and domestic-violence related physical assault offenses per 10,000 were used as outcome variables.
[Electronic gaming machine accessibility was measured as electronic gaming machines per 10,000 and gambling venues per 100,000 population. Modelling was used to estimate the associations between gambling accessibility and domestic violence, using annual postcode-level data in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.]
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13. The other key piece of information that was published this year was research into the link between EGMs and family violence police stats.
Francis Markham’s recent research used annual postcode-level data, in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.
He describes the association between police-recorded domestic violence and electronic gaming machine accessibility at the Victorian postcode level. Police-recorded family incidents per 10,000 persons and domestic-violence related physical assault offenses per 10,000 were used as outcome variables.
[Electronic gaming machine accessibility was measured as electronic gaming machines per 10,000 and gambling venues per 100,000 population. Modelling was used to estimate the associations between gambling accessibility and domestic violence, using annual postcode-level data in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.]
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14. The other key piece of information that was published this year was research into the link between EGMs and family violence police stats.
Francis Markham’s recent research used annual postcode-level data, in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.
He describes the association between police-recorded domestic violence and electronic gaming machine accessibility at the Victorian postcode level. Police-recorded family incidents per 10,000 persons and domestic-violence related physical assault offenses per 10,000 were used as outcome variables.
[Electronic gaming machine accessibility was measured as electronic gaming machines per 10,000 and gambling venues per 100,000 population. Modelling was used to estimate the associations between gambling accessibility and domestic violence, using annual postcode-level data in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.]
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15. The other key piece of information that was published this year was research into the link between EGMs and family violence police stats.
Francis Markham’s recent research used annual postcode-level data, in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.
He describes the association between police-recorded domestic violence and electronic gaming machine accessibility at the Victorian postcode level. Police-recorded family incidents per 10,000 persons and domestic-violence related physical assault offenses per 10,000 were used as outcome variables.
[Electronic gaming machine accessibility was measured as electronic gaming machines per 10,000 and gambling venues per 100,000 population. Modelling was used to estimate the associations between gambling accessibility and domestic violence, using annual postcode-level data in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.]
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16. The other key piece of information that was published this year was research into the link between EGMs and family violence police stats.
Francis Markham’s recent research used annual postcode-level data, in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.
He describes the association between police-recorded domestic violence and electronic gaming machine accessibility at the Victorian postcode level. Police-recorded family incidents per 10,000 persons and domestic-violence related physical assault offenses per 10,000 were used as outcome variables.
[Electronic gaming machine accessibility was measured as electronic gaming machines per 10,000 and gambling venues per 100,000 population. Modelling was used to estimate the associations between gambling accessibility and domestic violence, using annual postcode-level data in Victoria between 2005 and 2014.]
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17. Structural change
Supporting regional partners with work related to harm from gambling such as local councils and community groups
Understanding gender inequality as a the key gendered driver of violence against women information session with the VRGF
Seeking to embed gendered research into the gambling sector
Markham’s research has enabled us to clearly put a public health perspective on the link between family violence and gambling, which we are using in our regional work. We are now able to conceptualize both these issues as public health issues, due to the Gambling harm study, and this research.
(instead of thinking about problematic behaviors (i.e problem gambling)
Instead we can now talk confidently about the types of harm that individuals, families, communities and societies experience from gambling and work with community orgs and councils in their efforts to advocate for a safer gambling environment (which is code for getting rid of poker machines.)
Allows us to influence to a public health policy response to this issue.
The first way in which we are working on structural change is in bringing gender into the picture, in the work with the VRGF, such as our session for staff and also in our work with local organizations and councils, such as writing supporting submission to planning bodies about the harms from gambling to women and the link with family violence.
We are also still arguing for gendered research - particularly need to look at financial abuse and what this looks like for women when gambling is present.
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18. Continuing to explore the link between gambling and financial abuse
Where to from here?
Research into women’s experiences of this link - women’s voices are key
Applying a feminist intersectional approach to understanding this issue
Continuing to explore the link between gambling and financial abuse
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