Stacey Ross On Empathetically Addressing The Cultural Issue Of Domestic Violence In Australia

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Stacey Ross started her career and discovered her passion for the community sector at the age of 19 and has never looked back.

With inspiring ideas, endless desire and the ability to empower others to reach their full potential, Stacey is a dynamic and passionate leader. With qualifications in Human Services and Community Development combined with strong management skills, Stacey helps deliver outstanding results for the community sector through her role as CEO of The Centre For Women & Co.

Motivated by the team she works with, Stacey’s entrepreneurial way of thinking gets people excited about the possibilities within their own lives and their community.

Stacey discusses how crucial her team is to succeeding in social enterprise and the policies that could effectively counter and breakdown the systemic issue of domestic violence in Australia.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - Could you please share a bit about your background and what led to your work in social enterprise?

[Stacey Ross] - I started when I was 19 with a youth service working with young people. I guess I was a young person myself, and I really quickly found myself supporting the people that I worked with and encouraging them to reach their full potential or achieve what ideas they had by asking myself, “how can I help them make their ideas come true,” or, “what could I leverage to help them with their ideas and projects?” That's where I started, but then I quickly realised that I wanted to be in leadership positions where I could elevate my team to be the best that they can be.

I'm only as good as my team, so anything that I can do to help them achieve their goals and their dreams was really appealing to me.

I met this really beautiful young man who had lost his friend in a car accident, and they were all at school at the time. It was a really massive hit to the community that they had lost this young boy, and his friend wanted to put on a skate, scooter and music festival in honour of him. I said to the friend, "let's do it." We spent quite a few months organising this festival, and more young people became involved in it along the way. There was just this beautiful energy, and it created an incredible event where they had different music artists and collaborators coming together in a rural town to put on this incredible festival in honour of their friends.

That's where I started realising there are these systemic issues in the community, but there is so much untapped potential in the innovative ways that we can work.

Fast forward a few years, I got into the women's sector, and I had completed my degree in human services and majored in HR because I just needed that piece of paper to say that I could be a manager. But I hardly remember anything from my degree because I hit the ground running and quickly learnt through experience. My introduction to social enterprise was when I was running the women's service and we were on the verge of being defunded because the government was changing their focus on what they wanted to invest in. I had to start thinking about how we can do this work differently to generate and sustain our operations. That was my first introduction to the concept of social enterprise.

Stacey, it's amazing to see how much drive and passion you have there. Now, you're the CEO of The Centre For Women & Co., and they're a leader in the space of supporting women who have experienced domestic violence. What services does the centre provide and how do they foster wellbeing amongst this demographic?

The first part is what services we provide, so we work across the Logan and Redlands region in South East Queensland and offer a range of services and programs for people experiencing domestic, family violence or mental health issues. We also have Men & Co. Services, which provide services for men who are using violence or don't want to use violence, but don't know how to stop. In terms of The Centre For Women, we offer children involved domestic and family violence counselling because unfortunately, a lot of children experience that within their family homes. It is incredibly sad, heartbreaking and devastating that these young children as young as three are coming in and needing support. We offer domestic and family violence crisis support, and that is for women coming into The Centre who need to leave their home quickly and safely. They can come to our centres and access that support and refuge. Then, we also offer practical support including mobile phones, food, fuel vouchers, safety planning and risk assessments.

We work through with the women as they are the experts of their lives and know what we need to do to get them safe. Then we can activate that plan alongside them.

We offer mental health counselling; we do lots of group work and have high risk teams that are working with the highest risk DV cases. The women that are the focus of the high-risk teams are at an imminent risk of death, and we have lots of different projects and workers across different organisations including QPS, Queensland Health, the court system youth justice, housing and child safety. All of these core members come together regularly to discuss the cases and make sure that the women and children are safe, so it's not just the DV service holding that risk.

We have a men's change behaviour program for men who are using violence, and they go through a 26-week course with beautiful community education teams.

Our marketing communication team do all of our community engagement. We go out into the sector, to schools and we have beautiful resources on our website. We've just launched a healthy relationships booklet, which goes through everything from consent, to what happens when somebody says no to you and how do you deal with that on the self-care side of things as well? The Centre for Women has many activities, and we're always thinking of different ways to help women, children and men be safe.

It's such an extensive range of programs that you're offering at The Centre. Stacey, when we were just talking before about your educational background, you really had a focus on human services, counselling and working with the community. What skills did these experiences teach you and how do you believe these skills are critical to succeeding in the social impact sector?

From my qualifications, what I've been able to take from them is that while there are those theories alongside the work that we do, there are the practical components and the relationships that you build with people. That lends itself into developing partnerships and then also the client work that we do where you need the ability to empathise and build rapport, but then you need a business lens to become a leader within the community sector. One of the things that I missed speaking about is our social enterprise initiative. We have a social enterprise as part of The Centre For Women, and that is called Her Platform. Her Platform has two components to it, Her Space and Her Shop.

Her Space is our co-locating workspace in Underwood, where you can hire out the entire centre as an event space, different meeting rooms or available workshop spaces. All of the revenue goes back into programs and practical support of The Centre.

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Then we have Her Shop, which is where we sell products such as empowering t-shirts for men and women or stationery. That is always going to be an ever-evolving space, and it goes hand in hand with my qualification of human services and the diversity of skills that come with that. I trained in leadership, business management and participated in the Australian Institute for Company Directors course, which was just incredible. That gives you a overview of what it takes to run a business but also that necessary human component.

Stacey, looking a bit more on a broader level, what support do you think could be offered federally whether from the government or private sector to help respond to the cyclical issue of domestic violence?

Great question. I think my instant thought is investment in education and early intervention programs. We do this work on a minuscule level with a very tight budget across our region.

But if there was an opportunity for the government or private sector to help on a larger level, I'd be speaking to them about the early intervention space, where the education department can be involved in this and how does it become a part of our curriculum?

How do we teach our younger generations about what is okay and what is not okay in relationships? We launched last year our children's book My Friend Gordon, and it's all about this beautiful little boy who has a friend but is confused about why his friend is wanting to be friends with other people. Gordon was wondering, “don't I own him as a friend?” It's a really early educational piece around healthy relationships, and that can be a friendship, sexual relationship or work relationship. It's any relationship that you have in your life where you need to deeply understand your rights and responsibilities. My other broader suggestion would be a commitment to the accountability of people using violence.

Those are a few really great recommendations there Stacey, and hopefully the federal government in the next few years will enact some of those policies and frameworks. As I mentioned earlier Stacey, you are a leader in the sector. However, there are many other inspiring projects or initiatives I'm sure you have come across recently, so are there any that you would like to mention?

We are so blessed in Australia that there is such an incredible range of different people doing different things, especially in the social enterprise realm. I think for me, when I think about this particular question, it's about changing the conversation around supporting people who aren't feeling great and are using violence, that is where we need to focus our energy.

It doesn't mean that we're taking our energy away from supporting women and children, it just means that we are trying to conduct that early intervention and prevention before it gets worse.

When we started thinking about The Centre for Women's impact and how do we actually stop domestic violence before it starts, it comes back to supporting men. There's a lot of anxiety around talking about that as a woman, because I think there's a lot of confusion around what feminism means. People say you can't be a feminist if you're supporting men. Well, actually you can, because I'm a hardcore feminist, but I think that if we can help men not hurt women, then we will be in a much better place. We need to have that conversation and we need men at the table for those conversations. That's what inspired us to develop Men & Co. Services. It's in its really early stages, and it has so much potential. We opened up Men & Co. in October last year. Our website went live about seven weeks ago, and we've had no advertising yet, but regardless, we have been receiving five to seven inquiries a week from men saying, "I'm breaking up with my partner and I'm not coping. Can you please help me?"

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There is a massive gap here that needs to change, and that would change the trajectory as well, because people are now thinking we need to stop domestic violence before it even starts.

A lot of the time we hear women saying, "I love him, but I just want him to stop using violence. I don't want to break up with him and I don't want him to go to prison, I just want him to stop using violence." We are now at The Centre for Women thinking about how can we be a part of that as a society? I think it will be through holding perpetrators accountable, but also offering them a different way of living.

It's great to see the concepts integrated directly into The Centre’s programs.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners, whether these are directly related to social enterprise or any of the theories that are underpinning your work?

One of the things that I haven't really touched on, but I will very quickly touch on again because it relates to the books and the resources is that although obviously my passion is about our work, above that is my passion for my team. [That passion involves] looking after them and making sure that they are the healthiest that they can be mentally, physically and emotionally. I mentioned at the beginning, I'm only as good as my team and I have the most amazing team. I love them to pieces, but a huge part of ensuring their wellbeing is making sure that the culture is healthy and safe.

There are resources and books that help me ensure that I am on the right track to ensuring they are all safe, because they're dealing with trauma all day, every day. They need to be the healthiest that they can be, and that comes down to our company culture.

A couple of the books and resources that I turn to are pretty cliché, but I absolutely swear by them. The first book is by Seth Godin, and it is What To Do When It's Your Turn. I also love Simon Sinek; he is just brilliant at really tapping into understanding why you do what you do. We ask our team members all the time, "why are you here?" This is because if you're not with us for the right reasons, then it's going to be a really quick turnaround. My final recommendation is Brené Brown, and she has influenced our values and the culture of The Centre for Women, especially through her book Dare To Lead. I'm so grateful for what she shares from her platform and how we've been able to integrate that into The Centre, to really build a safe and healthy culture for The Centre for Women’s team members, because I can't do this work without them.