The Imagined Futures Community of Practice held its third networking/ capacity building event for human service providers in the South West Metro region today.  This time the group chose to focus on offering a workshop on Understanding Family Domestic Violence in line with the 16 Days in WA campaign’s theme – stopping family and domestic violence: play your part.

The workshop aimed to empower service providers and community workers to play their part by teaching them how to better identify and support clients at risk of family and domestic violence.

In a sad reflection of the increasing incidence and impact of FDV in our communities, registrations for the workshop filled fast soon reaching the 30-person cap, with another 20 people on the waiting list.

On the day 32 people came together from 18 different organisations representing commonwealth, state and local governments, and a wide range of community agencies.  It is heartening to think of the reach of this training with each attendee able to take back their new found knowledge to their organisations.

Brilliant! Loved it! More please!  – is one of several positive comments made about the day and sums up how timely, relevant, and well-pitched the session was.

The success of these events is a true reflection of the calibre and commitment of the Community of Practice members*, which is ably led by Sue Nickisson from Communicare.  The workshops are put together on an extremely small budget because each of the members’ contributions are largely in kind – for example the facilitation of the workshop and the venue costs. In this case generously provided by Communicare and the City of Melville respectively.  Each of the CoP members worked together to organize logistics and promote the event. Imagined Futures contributed to the catering costs through the Where is the Door? Project funding.  The St Pat’s Community Store donated the door prize – a self-care package which was won by the wonderful Shan Nicholas from the City of Cockburn.

*Imagined Futures Community of Practice is comprised of Sue Nickkison, Communicare; Sakina Bindahneem, Fremantle Women’s Health Centre; Evie Devitt-Rix, City of Fremantle; Sian Brown, City of Melville; Linda Walker, City of Cockburn; Kriz Brander, Library Connect (St Pat’s/ City of Fremantle) with backbone support from Karen Silverthorne, Imagined Futures.