The 5-Year Evidence Review of the Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management (MARAM) Framework has been completed and is now available. The review was conducted independently and looked at whether MARAM reflects best practice family violence risk assessment and risk management and what changes may be needed.
The review included a literature review and a review of best practice and design of MARAM resources with 225 stakeholders from 81 organisations, including victim survivors, service providers, government departments and peak bodies.
The Victorian Government has accepted all 17 recommendations of the review which found that across all sectors, MARAM is considered a valuable resource that supports a shared understanding of family violence, risk assessment and management practices. The recommendations include:
- updating and expanding MARAM’s description of family violence to include emerging evidence
- expanding guidance to address gaps in how risk is addressed
- revising resources to better support victim survivor agency
- better capturing factors that are used as part of a pattern of coercive control
- strengthening guidance on collaborative practice
- revising guidance to support a more narrative-based approach for risk assessment to better support victim survivor agency
- helping practitioners to adopt an intersectional approach as part of the risk assessment process
- improving guidance and resources to better reflect how family violence affects diverse communities, including people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, people with disability, people from culturally and linguistically diverse and refugee communities, older people, LGBTIQA+ people, people experiencing mental ill health, and people who have drug or alcohol dependence.
MARAM is an innovative, Australian-first framework that has transformed the way we identify, assess and manage family violence risk to increase the safety of victim survivors in Victoria. It is a critical part of our family violence reform which makes responding to family violence a collective responsibility across health, education, justice, social services and other sectors.
Since 2018, over 200,000 workers have undertaken training in, or aligned to, MARAM and the Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme.
In 2022-23 alone, practitioners at The Orange Door completed nearly 33,792 risk assessments.
More than 40,000 risk assessments and safety plans have been undertaken by specialist family violence services and homelessness practitioners in 2022-23, and more than 20,230 Central Information Point reports have been delivered since its commencement in April 2018 until June 2023.