Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used in the delivery of social services including domestic violence services. While it offers opportunities for more efficient, effective and personalised service delivery, AI can also generate greater problems, reinforcing disadvantage, generating trauma or re-traumatising service users. 

In partnership with researchers from the University of Queensland School of Social Science and the Automated Decision-Making and Society Centre of Excellence, this project seeks to co-design an innovative AI trauma-informed audit framework. It aims to provide a practical resource for social services agencies to make trauma informed choices about the technology they use. The research team is Dr Lyndal Sleep, and University of Queensland researchers Professor Paul Henman, Dr Suzanna Fay and Suvradip Maitra. 

QCDFVR is working with Warringu Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Corporation which initiated this project to develop a framework to build a wholistic model of care for women in shelter accommodation.  Currently shelters are only funded to provide temporary crisis accommodation for women and children who are escaping violence or at risk of homelessness: they are not funded to provide any services to support or address the underlying issues or therapeutic requirements of clients residing in the shelters.

The focus of the project is Far North Queensland, where there are 13 shelters whose primary clients are First Nations women and children.

Working in partnership with Central Queensland Indigenous Development (CQID) this QCDFVR evaluation will take an Indigenist approach that privileges the voice and lived experience of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

QCDFVR has been requested to undertake a comprehensive review of Investment Specifications (Specifications) by the Department of Justice and the Attorney-General (DJAG).  Investment Specifications are part of a hierarchy of funding documents for domestic, family, and sexual violence funded services, and there are two current Specifications pertinent to domestic, family, and sexual violence funded services.  Because Recommendation 13 of the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce Report highlights the need for a strategic investment plan, it is timely to review the current Specifications.

QCDFVR is undertaking a second and final evaluation of the Strangulation Trauma Centre (STC) model.  In September 2021, the Red Rose Foundation launched the STC to provide immediate and long-term support, counselling, and systems advocacy for women who have experienced non-fatal strangulation. Initially, the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General (DJAG) commissioned QCDFVR to evaluate a twelve-month trial of the Strangulation Trauma Centre.