Family violence is the largest single class of offending recorded by Victoria Police, the dominant driver of intervention order applications across the Magistrates’ Court network, and the most consistent presenting issue for the state’s specialist support services. Our newsroom has been working through the most recent Crime Statistics Agency Family Violence Database release and the Family Safety Victoria reporting on The Orange Door network. The reporting numbers continue to rise, the system is still building out the MARAM framework, and the policy and frontline conversations have shifted in important ways since the Royal Commission’s report a decade ago.
This piece follows the Mindframe and Our Watch guidelines on reporting violence against women. We do not name individuals in current matters, do not describe specific incidents in identifying detail, and frame the issue as a structural one — because that is what the data shows it to be.
The headline numbers
The Crime Statistics Agency’s most recent Victorian Family Violence Database release covered 2023–24 data. The total volume of family violence incidents reported to Victoria Police remains in the high tens of thousands per year, with the published Family Safety Victoria material citing around 92,296 incidents and 66,309 individuals or families referred for support through The Orange Door network in the most recent reporting period.
A few framing points before reading those numbers:
- The reporting rate is rising. That is partly because more victim-survivors are coming forward and partly because the institutional response — police, courts, hospitals, community health — is more attuned to identifying family violence as the underlying driver of presenting issues.
- The structural driver is gendered. Women are over-represented as victim-survivors and men are over-represented as primary aggressors. That pattern has been stable across decades of data.
- The intersection with child harm is heavy. Children are increasingly recognised as primary victim-survivors of family violence in their own right, not as witnesses to a crime against an adult.
The MARAM framework, in plain English
MARAM stands for the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework. It is the common risk-assessment language used across the family violence system — police, child protection, hospitals, schools, GPs, mental health services, alcohol and drug services and the specialist family violence sector. The framework was a Royal Commission recommendation, and its progressive rollout is one of the larger system-change projects in Victorian government.
The framework does three things:
- Defines the risk factors that workers should be looking for, so that two services responding to the same family identify the same warning signs.
- Sets out responsibilities by role — what a frontline practitioner does, what a specialist family violence worker does, what a manager does.
- Provides the assessment tools, including the adult and child victim-survivor MARAM risk assessments delivered through the TRAM platform built by Family Safety Victoria.
The most recent MARAM Annual Report records the workforce that has been trained and the agencies that have integrated the framework. The progress is real but uneven. Some sectors — including specialist family violence services and Victoria Police — are well-progressed. Others — including some general health settings and some segments of the alcohol and drug sector — are still working through implementation.
The Orange Door
The Orange Door (Support and Safety Hubs) is the front door for victim-survivors, perpetrators of family violence and families with broader child wellbeing concerns. It was set up under the Royal Commission reforms and rolled out progressively across the state. The network now operates in most areas, with co-located specialist family violence practitioners, child wellbeing practitioners, Aboriginal practitioners and intake teams.
The 66,309-individual referral figure cited above is one read on uptake. The other read is the volume that doesn’t reach The Orange Door — the people who never report, the people who present at hospital with injuries that aren’t asked about, the people who go to a GP with sleep problems and don’t get screened for the family violence underneath. Family Safety Victoria’s commissioning logic is to keep building demand for The Orange Door while shoring up the supply of specialist response capacity.
Where the system has improved
Our team’s read of the published material — the Implementation Monitor’s reports, the CSA database, the MARAM Annual Reports and the Family Violence Reform Rolling Action Plan — points to a handful of areas where the trajectory is genuinely better than it was a decade ago:
- Specialist Family Violence Court coverage is wider. The SFVC sites now include Ballarat, Shepparton, Heidelberg, Frankston, Moorabbin, Geelong (redeveloped 2026) and others, with Wyndham coming online from early 2027.
- Police identification of primary aggressor versus victim-survivor has improved as a result of training and supervisory practice. The misidentification rate is lower than it was a decade ago, although it has not been eliminated.
- Information-sharing between services has improved under the Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme and the Child Information Sharing Scheme.
- Risk assessment is now embedded in many parts of the system that did not previously consider family violence as part of their core practice.
Where the gaps still are
The harder honest assessment:
- Demand for specialist family violence services continues to outstrip supply. Waiting lists for case-managed support are real, particularly for women without children and for women in regional areas.
- Refuge and crisis accommodation capacity has not kept pace with reported demand. Safe Steps and partner services regularly turn away women and children because there is nowhere to send them.
- The intersection with child protection remains complicated. The Yoorrook Justice Commission’s recommendations on Aboriginal child protection sit at the centre of that conversation.
- Perpetrator interventions — men’s behaviour change programs and the broader work with people who use violence — are under-resourced relative to the scale of demand.
Where the conversation has shifted
The post-Royal Commission decade has changed the public language in a few important ways. Coercive control is now a recognised pattern of behaviour rather than a niche academic concept. Technology-facilitated abuse — surveillance through shared accounts, geolocation tracking, image-based abuse — is recognised in the system response. The role of family violence as an underlying driver in homelessness, in mental health presentations and in suicide is more visible.
Our team is wary of treating recognition as a substitute for response. The reporting numbers continue to climb because the underlying volume of harm continues to be high, not just because more people are coming forward.
What’s coming through 2026
The Family Safety Victoria Rolling Action Plan, the Victim of Crime Strategy and the next MARAM Annual Report are the three published documents our newsroom is watching for through the year. The 2025–26 implementation cycle has prioritised The Orange Door uptake, men’s behaviour change capacity and the specialist court rollout in growth-corridor areas.
If you or someone close to you is in danger
If you are in immediate danger, dial 000. Safe Steps Family Violence Response Centre operates the Victorian 24/7 family violence response line on 1800 015 188. 1800RESPECT is the national family violence and sexual assault helpline on 1800 737 732. The Sexual Assault Crisis Line is on 1800 806 292. Men’s Referral Service operates a confidential line for men who are using violence and want to stop on 1300 766 491. Lifeline is on 13 11 14, and Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. The Orange Door network can be reached through the Family Safety Victoria website, with regional contact numbers for each catchment.
If you are worried about a friend, neighbour or family member, you do not have to be sure before you reach out. The specialist services above will talk through the situation with you confidentially.
Mei Calloway covers family violence, road safety and community safety for Victoria Crime News.
