Completed Projects

Improving Women’s Health
Before, During and After Disasters Forum Presentations Handouts

 

Through Women's Eyes : Disaster Resilience
Alpine Shire women share their experiences about disaster resilience

 

Respectful Relationships
Promoting respectful relationships with young people in rural settings

 

Tools For Change
Financial mentoring for women whohave experienced situations of family violence and abuse.

 

Project Equity
A Review of Literature and Practice

Closing the Gap:
Young Women's Health Project: Stage 2 – June 2014 to Dec 2014

Tools For Change - is a project about women and financial capability building through a mentoring relationship. This project targets women who have low financial confidence and have recently left, or are planning to leave situations of family violence and abuse.

Women’s Experiences in the Aftermath of the Black Saturday Bushfire - A research project in the Shires of Mitchell and Murrindindi

2009 Common Cents: Common Cents is a financial capability mentoring program funded by the Victorian Women's Trust that was completed in December 2009. This project was highly successful, with some mentor pairs continuing to meet after the funding ceased. Significant financial awareness, understanding and changed circumstance were gained for the women, due to the encouragement and support of their mentors

2005 - 2010 Making Two Worlds Work: Building the capacity of the health and community sector to work effectively and respectfully with our Aboriginal community

2009 Abortion Law Reform: The Victorian Abortion Law Reform Bill was passed in the Legislative Council late on Friday night 10th October with 23 in support and 17 against. The Bill has now passed both houses of parliament unamended.

Abortion has been removed from the Victorian Crimes Act and to be regulated as a health service.

Our joining together with so many organisations and individuals has resulted in this monumental achievement.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed. Thanks in particular to members of the Victorian Parliament who approached this significant decision with deep reflection which led to incredibly informed debate. Many thanks to those women and men who assisted by providing leadership within and across the political parties.

2008 Raped by a Partner: Nowhere to go No-one to tell

2008 Our Vote Counts:Stories of Aboriginal Women's Voting Experience

2006 How sex and gender affects 10 health issues

As part of women's health promotion and advocacy for the Victorian Women's Health Summit of July 2006, ten collapsible banners were created with information on different women's health issues.

Women's health is still too often seen by many as being just about women's reproductive health. While this view remains, particularly amongst those in decision making positions in government and in the health care system, women’s health will continue to be compromised by policies and programs that simply don't respond to their needs.

Despite the growing international recognition of gender as a determinant of health, this awareness has yet to be incorporated into mainstream health policy, and in the design and delivery of programs and services. Victoria has made some progress in this area over the past 20 years, but not enough.

These banners were created to raise awareness of the biological (sex) and social (gender) differences in women's experience of health.

The issues were selected as a sample from a range of topics within health determinants, health issues, and health priorities. Content was created by a range of representatives from the women's health services and health promotion agencies.

Banners are available in two formats:

• Display version with original pictures
• Text version with full reference

The ten women's health banner topics are:

Why women's health: an overview	Display version (PDF 813KB)	Text version (PDF 33KB)
Women and alcohol	Display version (PDF 437KB)	Text version (PDF 46KB)
Women and cancer	Display version (PDF 465KB)	Text version (PDF 42KB)
Women and financial security	Display version (PDF 646KB)	Text version (PDF 39KB)
Women and heart disease	Display version (PDF 649KB)	Text version (PDF 41KB)
Women and mental health	Display version (PDF 628KB)	Text version (PDF 43KB)
Women and sexual and reproductive health	Display version (PDF 691KB)	Text version (PDF 42KB)
Women and social connectedness	Display version (PDF 578KB)	Text version (PDF 45KB)
Women and tobacco	Display version (PDF 535KB)	Text version (PDF 48KB)
Women and violence	Display version (PDF 583KB)	Text version (PDF 40KB)

Thanks to Women's Health Victoria for some of the content on this page. www.whv.org.au

2006 - Exposed: a literature review of the issues of women's cancers in Australian Aboriginal Communities This report explores how Aboriginal women experience cancer, with a lens on the rural Hume region of Victoria.

Download Exposed : a literature review of the issues of women's cancers in Australian Aboriginal Communities Size 577KB

2004 A Powerful Journey: Women reflect on what helped them leave violent situations
Sixteen women from across the Goulburn Valley and North East Victoria participated in this research project which WHGNE conducted in 2003. The first document records their experiences and their recommendations for change; the accompanying research report evaluates these findings.

Stories of Women Leaving Violent Situations

A Research Report: This two-publication pack was launched on 26th February, 2004 by Judith Peirce, the Commissioner, Victorian Law Reform Commission.

Woman to Woman 2004: Research on rural women's experience with breast cancer
Woman to Woman is a qualitative participatory research designed to explore the effects of breast cancer and breast cancer treatment on rural women. The women were asked to reflect on the effect of breast cancer on their lives generally and on the nature and quality of the services they received. They spoke about what was helpful to them and gave their views on how services may be further enhanced.

A research report on the experience of rural woman with breast cancer and implications for the provision of health services.

Insights from rural women with breast cancer. In depth interviews with 20 women with breast cancer. These are their stories.

A research report on the experience of rural woman with breast cancer and implications for the provision of health services. Executive Summary & Recommendations

2006-2007 Woman's Cancer Program Further work accomplished as a result of Woman to woman

2007 When the Wind Blows

2007 A Road Less Travelled: Voices of 21 teenage mothers from the country

Download with illustrationsSize 1.2MB         Download without illustrations Size 591KB

Pandora's Box Resource Guide 2006: Hume Region Family Violence & Disability

2007 Federal Election: Vote as if women matter

Microfinance

2004 – 2014 REAL Life Relationship Education & Awareness for Life

2004 Women of Gaia

2002-2003 Family Violence Integration Project: Turning the key in the door

2001-2003 LAMP: Looking After Mothers Project

2002 Picturing Motherhood: Mitchell and Murrindindi Shire

2001 Touching Women's Lives: A project for Older Women Carers in the Upper and Central Hume Regions.

2001 Sexual Health for Women with an Intellectual Disability
Count Me Two , an action research project undertaken from September 2001- September 2002, has sought to discover barriers to sexual health and to identify or develop strategies that potentially improve sexual health for women with intellectual disability.  The work has been conducted in Wangaratta in partnership with women with intellectual disability, service providers and training providers.

 There is no disability in women's hearts

Further work involved a partnership between women with disabilities and health practitioners working for health promotion and education.

Empowerment: women's sexual health through education: a peer leadership model

2000 Creative Arts Project
Due to the success of the creative arts project for the 1999 Week Without Violence, another project was developed to incorporate creative arts therapy into existing family violence support groups for women and young people in the Hume region in 2000, by Jacquie Coupe.

Evaluation report

Hume Health Promotion Co-ordination Projects

1999 Celebrating the Age We Are: health and wellbeing for women over 50

1999 Week Without Violence Community Education Project

1998 Koorie Cultural Regeneration Project

1997 Ports in a Storm: Postnatal Depression Rural Support Service Project
Between January and September 1996, Project Worker, Ruth Barr undertook this project, which aimed to improve the local service system’s response to women experiencing postnatal depression. A focus in this research was that the voices of women as consumers of health and community services be heard. The Project gathered information through interviews with Wangaratta women, postal survey of service providers and two information seminars. The project reports findings using the three strands of:

1. service systems structure, range of services and preferred service models
2. detection and recognition of postnatal depression, and
3. linkages and service co-ordination.

Recommendations are made in regard to:
· achieving a specialist support service for PND in Wangaratta.
· community and professional education
· detection and assessment
· antenatal education, and
· referral and co-ordination.

1997 By Themselves
By Themselves was a research project undertaken to investigate the specific housing and support needs of young pregnant and parenting women in the City of Greater Shepparton. This project grew from concern felt in Shepparton in the mid 1990s that there were many young pregnant women and young mothers whose needs for assistance from community service agencies were unable to be met. Shepparton has roughly twice the average Victoria birth rate for young women 15-19 years. The project auspice was Goulburn Accommodation Program Inc. and Women's Health Goulburn North East successfully tendered for the project consultancy. The study commenced in January 1997 conducted by Project Worker Ruth Barr.

The research included individual interviews, focus groups and consultation with service providers.

The project outcomes included:

1. Wesley Uniting Church, Shepparton making available a property owned by them for an integrated, intensive, case-managed housing and support service for a lead tenant and two young women under 20 and their children, and
2. improvement of the existing framework of housing and support services.
   

1997 Our Lives, Our Health, Our Responsibility: Beechworth Young Women’s Project