The Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland (ECCQ) says the Queensland Government’s review of the Common Risk and Safety Framework is a necessary step, but reform of the tool itself will not be enough to
address the barriers migrant and refugee women face in seeking safety.
ECCQ CEO Lisa Ward said the review must be judged on whether it drives change across the whole system, not just the framework’s wording.
“A better risk assessment tool is only as good as the system around it. If frontline workers aren’t trained to use it, if interpreters aren’t consistently available, and if there is nowhere safe to refer a woman once risk is identified, a new framework changes very little,” Ms Ward said.
ECCQ is calling for the review to drive change in four areas:
- Workforce capability: sustained training so frontline staff across all service regions can apply culturally safe, trauma-informed practice, not just a one-off rollout.
- Interpreter access: consistent, quality-assured interpreter use built into risk assessment, not left to individual worker discretion.
- Referral pathways: clear, resourced pathways from risk identification to specialist multicultural services, so identifying risk leads to meaningful support.
- Availability of specialist services: investment to match rising demand, so services acting as trusted entry points are not left to absorb growth without additional capacity.
Departmental figures show that culturally and linguistically diverse support cases, including victim-survivors, children and perpetrators, increased from 5,111 in 2023-24 to 8,512 in 2024-25. A further 8,449 cases were recorded in the nine months to March 2026. ECCQ cautions that these figures do not necessarily indicate an increase in the incidence of violence. They may also reflect population growth, greater awareness, new coercive control laws and improved reporting and data collection.
ECCQ chairs the Queensland Multicultural Service Sector Executive Network, representing the state’s specialist multicultural service providers, and stands ready to bring the expertise of specialist services and the lived experiences of migrant and refugee women directly into this review. ECCQ welcomes the Government’s recognition that current tools are inadequate.
Success should be measured not by a revised document, but by whether migrant and refugee women experience faster, safer and more culturally responsive support when they come forward. Achieving this will depend on specialist multicultural services having a meaningful role in shaping the reforms.
