Imagine you are a police officer….. When you come to work and have just put your uniform and gear on when you get called to a Family Domestic Violence incident. As you arrive you meet two very agitated people, there is blood everywhere, the woman has what looks like a stab wound to both her face and arm, the man has a ripped shirt, there are lots of screaming, lots of fear mixed with despair and anger among the adults. Under the table, there is a 4-year-old holding a toddler tight in her arms and the toddler is holding on for dear life to his sister.
As your colleagues are attending to the parents, you get down on your knees to attend to the children. The tears and the fear the children feel is not made any less by the parents screaming – “Get away from my children. Don’t you touch them!” Now the children are screaming and crying for their parents as the only adults they know. The parents are now both trying to get back to their children and end up both being arrested… you gently take the children in your arms, you speak softly and loving to them as you bring them to the hospital, where you wait there until child protection services arrive. (Fast forward two weeks from today, you have to re-attend the same address/same people for a recurrence of the same Family Violence issue… you may think to yourself this endless cycle will continue unless many forms of disruptors/support are injected into the mix) It is now noon and you are heading back to the office to write the report when you and your partner receive another call of a Family Domestic Violence incident and then another.
It is now 5 o’clock and your shift has been over for an hour and you still have all the incidents to report. By the time you have provided the appropriate duty of care to all, investigating finding out who is the Primary/Secondary perpetrators and Primary/Secondary Victims in today’s incidents. You have referrals and follow-ups with the triage team, and then the triage team will follow up with these families and make sure they are offered/provided the help and care they need to live free from family violence.
You do your best even if it is so hard to not think of those children and you wonder what the future has in store for them and their families. What else could you do? Then you think of your own children and can’t wait to hug them hard when you get home….
At 8 o’clock when you pick up some dinner on your way home, you overhear two people in the grocery lane saying – “Look at her thinking she is all that, some fancy police officer. They don’t do anything to help anybody but themselves.” You take a deep breath and sigh, feel sad that is what they think and wish you would have time and energy to explain to them even just what one day had been like and how much you do care and why you became a Police Officer was to protect the community….
While putting petrol in your car on your way home you overhear two people complaining about how the foyer area in their apartment block have leaves blowing inside every day and the maintenance staff only clears it every second day. On and on they go they are going to call an extra building meeting to deal with this so the leaves will be removed daily if not twice daily!
You think to yourself – Imagine if those two people who were so passionate about a clean foyer and the length they would go through to keep it clean…IMAGINE if they would provide that passion to make it unacceptable for any child to have to grow up in Family Violence.
Imagine what Western Australia could be like in the future – by breaking the intergenerational cycle of Family Domestic Violence.
Thank You to all Police officers and your families who support you, as you work tirelessly to keep our children, families and friends safe from Family violence. Also thank you to all the social workers, The Salvation Army and so many others who care and do something about ensuring Western Australia is a safer place to grow up and raise our families.
My question to myself and to you is, what do YOU/WE do, as citizens of Western Australia? If we ALL did a little, such as check-in on friends and family and ask if they are ok.
If you see something, say something! Do you know what the signs of Family violence are? Do you know what to do to help/support a friend experiencing Family violence? Prevention is always better than a cure.
Join us to learn more at our FREE event: Hear firsthand from a police officer and a social worker on how it impacts them. You will hear first-hand the impact Family Violence has on frontline workers, the challenges, the rewards and the HOPE