No one should ever feel unsafe – but contact Safer Community if you need help
As a Deakin student, you have access to a range of health and wellbeing services. One of the most important of these is Safer Community – our central point of contact for behaviour that makes you or others feel unsafe, including reports and disclosures of sexual harm and family violence.
Types of threatening behaviour
Sexual harm is any unwanted sexual behaviour that you have not agreed to. It can take many forms, including touching, exposure, sexual images taken or shared without consent, or any form of sexual penetration.
Family violence is any violence that occurs in current or past family, domestic or intimate relationships, such as between parents and children, siblings and intimate partners. It includes behaviours such as:
- physical violence (hitting, choking, use of weapons)
- emotional abuse, also known as psychological abuse (intimidating, humiliating)
- coercive control (controlling access to finances, monitoring movements, isolating from friends and family).
Concerning behaviour includes anything that:
- makes you feel threatened, unsafe or uncomfortable
- makes you worried that someone may be harmed
- offends you
- just doesn’t feel quite right.
How Safer Community can help you
If you experience or witness any of these types of threatening behaviour, or ever feel unsafe in your home or at uni, Safer Community is here to support you. This includes assisting you with a safety plan if appropriate or providing advice and referrals to other services.
Our trained professionals are experienced in dealing with this kind of trauma – and it doesn’t matter when or where it happened. We want everyone to feel safe while they’re at Deakin – whether you can physically come to campus or you’re studying online.
Visit the Safer Community website to find out more, including what will happen if you make a disclosure, how we manage your privacy, and what ongoing referrals, support and monitoring are available.
How to contact Safer Community
Safer Community is not an emergency or crisis response service – we only operate during business hours. If you or someone else needs immediate help, please contact Victoria Police by calling Triple Zero (000) or Deakin Security on 1800 062 579.
For confidential assistance, contact us during business hours (Monday to Friday, 9am–4pm) by:
- calling us on 03 9244 3734
- emailing us at [email protected]
- contacting us online to report or access support for:
Other information and help
There’s a range of support services available, both at Deakin and in the community. And remember that if your personal situation becomes dangerous or unsustainable, you can leave home to escape family violence at any time, regardless of the current COVID-19 situation.
- If you need to talk to someone, contact Deakin’s Counselling and Psychological Support (CAPS) service.
- Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria has information on how to stay safe from domestic and family violence during COVID-19.
- 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) provides information, counselling and support for people affected by family violence and sexual harm.
- Daisy App and Sunny App connect women and women with disability to local services.
- Men’s Referral Service (1300 766 491) provides family violence-related telephone counselling, information and referrals for men.
- Djirra (1800 105 303) provides support for Aboriginal people experiencing family violence.
- Thorn Harbour Health has a family violence service and details of other services specifically for the LGBTIQ+ community.