A Family Violence Response Model That Works — Now It Needs Funding
Rachel Payne MP is calling on the Victorian Government to fund the statewide expansion of the Alexis Family Violence Response Model (Alexis-FVRM) — a coordinated police and social services approach that’s already delivering results where it’s been trialled.
What is Alexis-FVRM?
The model embeds a specialist family violence worker within every police unit, pairing an immediate police response to crisis situations with a specialist who helps victim-survivors assess risk and connect to housing, mental health and medical support — while also linking perpetrators into behaviour change programs. It treats family violence as both a crime and a health and social issue, built on the idea that police and social services get better outcomes working together than apart.
The results so far
Piloted across five police units in Victoria and independently evaluated by RMIT in 2024, the model has shown:
- 66% of victim-survivors left the program at lower risk
- 85% reduction in recidivism among perpetrators
- 78% of victim-survivors felt supported
- 83% engagement from victim-survivors — despite the well-known difficulty of achieving this
What it would cost
The Parliamentary Budget Office has costed statewide expansion at just $10 million a year — a fraction of what family violence currently costs Victoria annually across policing, courts, hospitals, housing and child protection.
Read the full release
The complete media release — including attributable quotes from Rachel Payne MP and Giselle Bailey of WAYSS, plus background on the pilot and costings — is available to download below.
