Primary Prevention Practitioner Forum

This work can be challenging, particularly when it is difficult to know where to focus our efforts, how to identify the opportunities for greatest impact, and how to navigate resistance to change. For this year’s 16 Days in WA, PVT has partnered with the Shift Project from Canada to bring some of their learning and approaches into conversation with the WA primary prevention community. For almost two decades, Shift has been exploring how primary prevention can move beyond individual programs to influence the places, organizations and systems where the conditions that contribute to violence are created and sustained. Their work spans workplace culture change, place-based prevention in rural and regional communities, and policy and systems change. At the WA Primary Prevention Practitioners Forum, Shift will share practical approaches and lessons from this work as a starting point for discussion, reflection and exchange about what these ideas could mean in the WA context. Together, we will explore practical approaches for understanding the communities and systems we work within, identifying where opportunities for change exist, and focusing primary prevention efforts where they can have the greatest impact. The day is intended as an offering to the primary prevention community: a space to share experiences, test ideas, learn from one another and strengthen our collective practice. By bringing together what we know, what we are learning and the different perspectives and experiences in the room, we hope to strengthen our collective ability to create the conditions in which women and children can live safely, freely and without fear of family and domestic violence. A program will be released closer to the event. Forum Details: Date: Tuesday 1 December 2026 Time: 9am to 4pm Location: Functions on Hay, 445 Hay St, Perth Cost: $100 (Price includes morning tea and lunch). If cost is a barrier to your attendance or for other enquiries, please contact Alicia Gibbs, Manager Preventing Violence Together at [email protected]. Shift! Project Shift: The Project to End Domestic Violence (Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary) is Canada's first research-to-action hub dedicated to the primary prevention of domestic and gender-based violence. Grounded in evidence and driven by implementation, Shift works to stop violence before it starts by bridging research, policy, and practice. For more than 16 years, Shift has partnered with governments, communities, workplaces, researchers, practitioners, and people with lived expertise to generate evidence, strengthen capacity, and create the social conditions that prevent violence before it occurs. Through interdisciplinary research, policy development, knowledge mobilization, and implementation science, Shift translates evidence into practical, scalable solutions that can be adopted across sectors and organizations. Shift's work spans engaging men and boys, promoting healthy youth relationships through technology, strengthening workplace culture, advancing place-based prevention, building the capacity of informal support networks, and supporting systems change through data. Working across local, provincial, national, and international contexts, Shift collaborates closely with governments and policymakers to inform prevention strategies, legislation, and public policy. More recently, Shift has become a leader in place-based primary prevention, combining law enforcement, women’s shelter, and open access community data with local knowledge and cross-sector partnerships to identify community priorities, mobilize collective action, and strengthen prevention efforts before violence occurs. Learn more about Shift on their website and check out their online training resources at Shift to Learn.