13,169 signatures, 1,591 Shares of our petition, and 162 people who have collectively contributed $15,756 to promote our petition is amazing!! Thank You! It has given all Victorian survivors, their families and communities a voice in Victorian Parliament, about the urgency of governments taking more effective action on the child sexual abuse national health crisis.
Since our petition was tabled in Parliament last year, we have continued communications with the Victorian Government, and are now talking with Mr Brad Rowswell MP, about the urgency of the Government taking action on multiple recommendations. The many Royal Commissions, Inquiries, Peak Bodies and governments, including the Victorian Government itself, that have called for integrated systems of health and care to be implemented for various cohorts in Australia, including survivors of child sexual abuse, over the past decade.
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28.5% of Australians aged 16–65 and over have experienced child sexual abuse. Child maltreatment dramatically increases the odds of four serious mental disorders, and of having a mental disorder. Australians who experience child sexual abuse are, in the prior 12 months:
• 2.7 times more likely to have self-harmed
• 2.3 times more likely to have attempted suicide
• 1.2 times more likely to have had an overnight hospital admission
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Your support gives huge weight to our calls for the Australian Government to work with the Victorian Government, to pilot a place-based model of integrated care, by expanding the Regional Mental Health and Wellbeing Boards established in the Grampians and South East Metro, Melbourne. As these regions include two Victorian communities devastated by historic, systemic institutional child sexual abuse, the Ballarat community, and the Bayside communities of Melbourne.
The pilots would provide learnings, to then support the rollout of more accessible, and effective services and supports for all Victorian survivors of child sexual abuse.
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This petition is organised by a community group who act in loving memory of Ian Walker and Trevor Foster. Ian and Trevor were mentioned and remembered In Parliament when the petition was tabled in 2022 by Mr Stuart Grimley MP.
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We are stronger and louder together, thank you to every one of our Petitioners.