The Safer Families Centre is committed to transforming health sector policy and practice responses to domestic, family, and sexual violence through research, training, support tools, and evaluation. Collaborating internationally and locally with researchers, practitioners and lived experience victim-survivors, we promote safety, wellbeing, and healing of families.

Safer Families Centre is connected to the Sexual And  Family ViolencE (SAFE) program within the Department of General Practice and Primary Care at The University of Melbourne. Co-led by Kelsey Hegarty and Laura Tarzia, the broader research within the SAFE program spans multiple disciplines to understand the dynamics of all types of domestic, family and sexual violence; the links between violence and health; and to develop and test interventions for screening, early identification, and responses for women, children, young people and men, including the use of technologies.

Foundational to our existence are our affiliations with the WEAVERs lived experience survivor group, the Melbourne Research Alliance to End Violence Against Women and their Children (MAEVe), and the Centre for Family Violence Prevention at the Royal Women’s Hospital. 

Led by Kelsey Hegarty, Safer Families Centre is also affiliated with the RESTORE Centre led by Laura Tarzia, both Centres operating out of the SAFE program.