Keeping Women Safe in their Home

Technology-facilitated abuse is a growing contributor to violence against women, with perpetrators increasingly accessing digital means to monitor, stalk and control a victim’s movements.

Through the Keeping Women Safe in their Home (KWSITH) initiative, the Department of Child Safety, Youth and Women is trialling a range of new and emerging technologies to help improve the safety of women and their children escaping domestic and family violence, and enable them to remain in their own homes following the completion of a comprehensive risk assessment as part of a safety plan.

The trials are being conducted in four locations — Cairns, Rockhampton, Ipswich and Caboolture.

Technologies to be trialled include:

• personal duress alarms with 24x7 monitoring through an external security service
• CCTV home security cameras linked to devices to record data
• victim-focused smartphone technology applications
• training and support  to raise awareness about technology-facilitated abuse among trial participants and
• electronic sweeps, scans and debugging of victims’ homes and belongings for surveillance technology.

These trials commenced in September 2016 and are due for completion by June 2019.

Commencing in 2017, the KWSITH initiative will also involve conducting:

• research and place-based trials of safety security upgrades of specific benefit to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander victims of domestic and family violence
• a project to deliver better outcomes for victims of domestic and family violence accessing the private rental market.

The KWSITH initiative is funded under the Australian Government’s Women’s Safety Package and complements other actions we are implementing to deliver on Recommendation 86 in the Not Now, Not Ever report.