Manager of the Cardinia Casey Community Health Service Deborah Stuart, Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O’Connor, City of Casey director of community development Sophia Petrov and Pastor Graeme Cann from the Casey Pastors Network with the national CITY of Casey was awarded an Australian Crime and Violence Prevention award for its innovative Promoting Peace in Families program.
The Minister for Home Affairs Brendan O’Connor announced the winners of the 2009 Australian Crime and Violence Prevention Awards at Parliament House in Canberra in October.
Casey chief executive Mike Tyler said the council was proud to be nationally recognised for the program that was delivered in partnership with the Cardinia Casey Community Health Service and Casey Pastors Network.
He said it reflected a new frontier in family violence prevention.
“The leading-edge partnership project demonstrates a sustainable best-practice violence prevention model that can be replicated in many other local government organisations throughout Australia,” he said.
Some of the key strategies of the program include educating congregations and the broader community about unacceptable behaviours and healthy relationships and creating a sustainable, best-practice model that can be replicated elsewhere.
City of Casey director of community development Sophia Petrov said Casey was a large and diverse multicultural municipality that had significant examples of social disadvantage and the highest recorded rate of police intervention for family violence in Victoria when the program began.
“We were able to gain support from the National Community Crime Prevention Program and over the past two years 128 senior faith leaders have been involved in training and education to equip them to intervene effectively with victims and perpetrators,” she said.
As part of the award win, the council and the project partners received $10,000 to aid in the program.
