Ensuring the Second Action Plan Delivers for Migrant, Refugee, and Multicultural Australian Women and Children
Acknowledgement of lived and professional expertise
This submission is informed by convenience sampling consultation undertaken in partnership with Immigrant Women’s Support Service (IWSS) through the Women’s Ethnic Network (WEN) and ECCQ’s Members. Additional participants included QPASTT Youth Voice members, Rohingya United Youth Network, migrant and refugee women, mothers, young women, young men, community members, community leaders, service providers, and other stakeholders who shared their experiences and expertise.
Through these established networks, consultations reached around 30 participants across metropolitan, regional, and remote Queensland, including people from Ghanaian, Afghan (Hazara), South Sudanese, Indian, Filipino, Rohingya, and Colombian/Latin American communities, alongside engagement with domestic and family violence practitioners, women’s legal and support services, researchers, and government, as well as policing and policy stakeholders. This submission is grounded in both lived experience and professional expertise. We are deeply grateful to all participants who generously shared their experiences of domestic, family and sexual violence, as well as their knowledge of community needs, service responses, and systemic barriers. We acknowledge the courage required to share these experiences and honour these women and children who did not survive. All lived-experience accounts and consultation materials included in this submission have been de-identified and are presented in accordance with participant consent.
The formal consultation period for this submission was limited to approximately two months prior to the submission deadline. As a result, this submission necessarily drew on ECCQ’s established community relationships, WEN membership, recent consultations and long-standing work with multicultural communities across Queensland, including engagement with people with lived experience and some people who do not speak English. However, the short timeframe limited the extent to which additional targeted consultation could be undertaken with people who speak only languages other than English, particularly older community members and others less connected to existing networks. We acknowledge this limitation because it reflects a broader systemic challenge: the voices that are not easier to reach are often the least represented in policy development and evidence collection. Participants noted that significant community knowledge about the prevalence and impacts of violence remains absent from official evidence bases because data collection processes frequently occur only in English. Emphasising the need for sustained investment in longer-term, multilingual and community-led consultation and evidence-gathering processes
