Finding into death of Richard Powell

Contributing factors

• Family violence escalation
• Police misidentification of primary aggressor
• Inadequate family violence risk assessment in police L17 form
• Failure of No To Violence to action referral
• Child Protection failure to provide victim-centred support
• Homelessness and financial instability
• Methamphetamine use by both parties
• Absence of specialist family violence intervention

Coroner's recommendations

1. Child Protection should continue implementation of family violence training for all staff including two-day in-person sessions and e-learning modules
2. Child Protection should continue deployment of family violence specialist workers in offices to provide consultation on responding to parents experiencing family violence
3. Child Protection should develop victim-centred safety plans for affected parents and children as part of statutory case planning
4. Victoria Police should ensure L17 forms are accurately completed with all relevant family violence history information to properly inform risk assessment by support agencies
5. Victoria Police should prioritise consideration of controlling behaviours, history of family violence, threats to kill, and relative fearfulness of each party when identifying primary aggressor
6. No To Violence and other perpetrator services should ensure all referrals are actioned within appropriate timeframes and not left unactioned due to resource constraints
7. Orange Door network should continue expansion to provide integrated intake pathways combining women's family violence services, men's violence services, and family services
8. Service agencies receiving family violence referrals should view risk in conjunction with perpetrator and victim history rather than incident-based assessments alone