Australia's answer to domestic and family violence has mostly been rescue, pulling people out after the damage is done. Vital work, but it doesn't stop the water rising. This episode is about working upstream.

Lou Hayes is the founder of CQ Healthy Families, a volunteer-run charity in Central Queensland doing the quiet work of holding a community's safety net together: a fuel voucher when a family is getting out, emergency accommodation, a security door fixed, and respectful relationships education delivered into ten high schools a year, coordinated entirely by volunteers in their spare time, with no funding behind it.

Australia doesn't lack answers, the research, the plans and the royal commission recommendations already exist. What's missing, Lou argues, is a community that owns the problem together. She and Kirrily talk about what that looks like: family violence treated as everyone's business, the hard questions finally directed at the people using violence, and why Lou believes we can end something earlier generations wouldn't even name.

If anything in this episode feels close to home, 1800RESPECT is there any time, day or night, 1800 737 732.

For more resources and information on our events and programs, head to runagainstviolence.com.

This podcast was recorded on Gadigal and Wiradjuri land.

CREDITS

Host and Producer: Kirrily Dear

Executive Producer and Supervising Editor: Pariya Taherzadeh

Audio Editor: Graham Hunter

The Run Against Violence podcast is independently funded by the Broken Hill to Sydney Team Chase. Every entry and every piece of merch powers the movement to eliminate family violence from our communities.