Ms BADGER – Thank you. I also had some questions around police training on coercive control that’s been undertaken by the Small Steps 4 Hannah Foundation. I was wondering if you could please outline for us how it’s been tailored specifically for police and whether any evaluation’s been done at this point or when you’re intending to do an evaluation on the impact that training is having for Tasmania Police?
Mr ELLIS – Thank you, Ms Badger. Coercive control training sessions have taken place in forums that combine Tasmania Police, government and community members across the state. Further training continues to be held around the state in sessions planned for the coming months and a standalone session was held here in Parliament House on 18 November 2024, which was attended by 40 senior male State Service leaders. Other sessions have been conducted with over 3000 police, government and community sector participants. I’ll pass to Tasmania Police.
Ms ADAMS – I will pass to Assistant Commissioner Robert Blackwood.
Mr ELLIS – I introduce Assistant Commissioner Robert Blackwood to the table, at long last.
Mr BLACKWOOD – To be called up for a question, this is probably the best one, because for me this is such a good news story in terms of the training that was done. The way this training came about was that I and a couple of other staff attended a conference in NSW where some of the trainers from Small Steps 4 Hannah and Hannah’s parents presented, and it was some of the most moving training you could ever be a part of, hearing what was just the most tragic story. We train our police all the time in policy and procedure and we have great laws and great policy in terms of how we do it, but this training was about really getting into the hearts and minds of police and also community workers in this area to understand that every interaction they have with a family violence victim is important and can be life-changing.
The way this training is run out is it’s a two to three-hour workshop, depending on the interaction, and is run by a facilitator from Small Steps 4 Hannah. We brought in two really experienced police officers into that training in the family violence space, so we’re then linking that to what we do every day. We’ve had over 1000 of our police officers complete this training now and in total it’s more than 3000 throughout Tasmania. This training is also going into the prisons as well.
What we saw as a result of this training was a rise in our family violence incident reports. When police go to a family violence job, it can be classified as an argument, where a family violence offence isn’t necessarily committed, or an incident, where we believe family violence may occur. What we saw coming out of this training after each time it had been running in different areas was the level of reporting for incidents going up. That was telling us our officers were picking up on those small things, those coercive control incidents that the training is all about, so it had a really positive impact.
In terms of evaluation, I don’t want to give the full details here because I’m not 100 per cent sure that I can take that on notice but I believe it was evaluated. There’s feedback at the end of each session from the members who participate, but it’s something that we as an organisation are really proud of what we’ve done and we’ll continue to look at how we continue that rollout and further develop it.
Ms ADAMS – To add to Assistant Commissioner Blackwood’s answer, the Australia New Zealand Policing Advisory Agency (ANZPAA), has an annual conference where police practitioners from around the country come together and share really good policing strategies and success stories, and we’ve been requested to present on this particular training program at that conference which is next week.
Ms BADGER – Thank you. Will the funding for that program continue for the foreseeable future?
Mr BLACKWOOD – Small Steps 4 Hannah charge very little for doing it, which is a great thing. Also Justice, who were part of some of this training, contributed to it as well, so it’s been funded internally and we will continue to do that.
