About the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH)
The Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) works hard to create equal opportunities for all Victorians to live a safe, respected and valued life. Our areas of focus are child protection, housing, disability, the prevention of family violence, multicultural affairs, LGBTIQ+ equality, veterans, women and youth.
The department is committed to the principles of Aboriginal self-determination and enabling Aboriginal voice, knowledge and cultural leadership drive Aboriginal policy, legislation and system reform. This commitment drives and underpins improved outcomes for all Victorians. Victoria has signed the Closing the Gap National Agreement which now includes a target to reduce the rate of over-representation of Aboriginal children in care by 45 percent by 2031. Agreed actions in Wungurilwil Gapgapduir provides the foundation for how Victoria intends to achieve this target.
There was a need to continue to strengthen and improve child protection practitioners’ awareness, understanding and knowledge in working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. The development of the Asking the Question elearning module was in response to the high volume of de-identification requests memos being received by the department.
Developing the Asking the Question elearning module
Lucid Virtual Solutions developed an introduction learning module to upskill the child protection and housing workforce with training around how to confidently ask the question to gather correct and accurate cultural information for the families they work, which aimed to see a decrease in the amount if de-identification requests received by the department.
Branching was built into the elearning module so that child protection staff only accessed learning relevant to their role, similarly housing staff were only viewing content relevant to their role. Detailed child protection and housing scenarios were developed to step through how to ask the question in intake/first contact and home visit settings. This ensured the elearning module delivered realistic examples of how to ask the question when child protection and housing staff were on the job.
Below are samples of the delivered module:
DFFH win LearnX Award
The Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, along with Lucid Virtual Solutions were awarded a LearnX Diamond Award for the Asking the Question elearning module in the “Best elearning project – industry specific” category.
What our client’s saying
“On behalf of the working group, thank you for delivering us such a quality product, I took a look at the module earlier and I think it really hits the mark with the messaging we want to reinforce to our workforce. You and your team have been great to work with and I’ll definitely keep you guys in mind for any future projects I’m involved with, as I now know firsthand not only the quality of your work, but also your responsiveness and flexibility you incorporate throughout the project schedule.”
