Michelle Plumpton - Tas Police ARTICLE
The SFCU broadens and strengthens the Government’s Safe at Home response, providing an important high level oversight of family violence matters. Crucially, the SFCU is a permanent co-located group of personnel from the departments of Police, Fire and Emergency Management, Health and Human Services, Justice and Education, who perform detailed analysis and assessments of the most at risk families. This collaborative approach is a natural and logical evolution of Safe at Home and seeks to support a greater connectedness of government family violence services. The approach is centred on an informed system response which recognises the value of information sharing in supporting highly vulnerable clients. Our State’s statistics reflect that alcohol is a contributing factor in family violence. For the financial year 2017-2018, the Department of Police, Fire and Emergency Management received 3,011 reports of family violence. It was recorded that 697 perpetrators of family violence and 277 victims were affected by alcohol. That is a nearly a quarter of perpetrators involved in family violence being affected by alcohol. Just something to consider as the awareness of family violence and its long term impacts on those that it affects, increases.
I would like to take the opportunity in this article to introduce myself. My name is Michelle Plumpton and on 6 May 2019, I transferred from Hobart to the Western District to take responsibility for Western District Support Services. This area encompasses three separate work units: Road and Public Order Services (which includes a licensing commitment), Prosecution Services and Community Support Services. I have been a member of Tasmania Police for twenty-six years. I have previously worked in the Western District on two separate occasions (in total 10 years), therefore I am no stranger to the North West coast of Tasmania. I have a background in uniform duties, prosecution services, investigations and extensive experience in project management, strategic policy and legislation development. In recent times I was part of the project team that saw the creation and establishment of the Safe Families Coordination Unit (SFCU) which was the number one action of the Tasmanian Liberal Government’s Safe Homes, Safe Families: Tasmania’s Family Violence Action Plan 2015-2020. This Plan was launched in August 2015 and is the Tasmanian Government’s coordinated whole-of-government action plan to respond to family violence.
June 2019 www.tha.asn.au
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