Changing the Narrative: What WAM’s Growth Makes Possible

The past 12 months have been an important time for WAM. We have continued to grow our team, strengthen our mentoring program and expand our reach across Victoria, and been successful with a further year’s state government funding. We have supported more women, welcomed new mentors, strengthened our regional and remote work, and continued to build the partnerships and relationships that make our work possible. 

But growth is not the destination. The question we are asking now is: what does this growth make possible? 

Over recent months, we have been asking some big questions. Where does WAM need to be in three years? What needs to change? And what do we need to build now to get there? 

Our new Strategic Plan is being developed against a backdrop of growing evidence about what works and the lived experience of women who have navigated the justice system telling us what needs to change. Both are pointing us in the same direction. 

Women experiencing justice-system involvement often have complex and interconnected experiences of family violence, housing instability, mental health challenges, poverty and trauma. These experiences cannot be separated neatly into individual problems, and neither can the solutions. 

Women often arrive at the justice system through different pathways, shaped by experiences that require a different kind of response. 

This is why WAM's gender-responsive approach matters. It is also why early intervention matters. Women are more likely to successfully move away from the justice system when they have access to timely, community-based support that recognises their circumstances, strengths and goals. 

But there is another conversation we need to have about the narrative that surrounds crime and justice. 

For too long, the response to offending has been dominated by the idea that being tough on crime means being tough on people. Yet the women we work with, the evidence we are seeing, and the experiences shared with us tell a more complex story. 

If we want different outcomes, we need to be prepared to think differently about what causes offending, what prevents it, and what actually helps people change. 

This is the thinking behind our Changing the Narrative theme for Warriors & Makers this year. We want to elevate the voices of women with lived experience and create space to hear directly from those who understand the justice system from the inside. 

Lived experience is not simply a story to be heard. It is expertise. 

Recently, our team had the opportunity to hear from Karyn McCluskey, a leading voice in violence reduction and community safety from Scotland's Violence Reduction Unit. Her work has challenged traditional approaches to crime and demonstrated the importance of prevention, early intervention and addressing the underlying conditions that contribute to violence and offending. 

Conversations like this are important for WAM because we are not interested in simply doing more of the same. We want to keep questioning what works, learning from evidence and experience, and contributing to a different way of thinking about justice and community safety. 

Our evaluation and program data continue to demonstrate the value of the mentoring relationship. But the evidence also gives us an opportunity to look more closely at what makes those relationships effective, where there are gaps, and how we can reach more women who could benefit. 

Alongside this, our Lived Experience Peer Group and Speaking from Experience: A Framework to Drive Change are helping us think differently about whose knowledge counts. Women with lived experience are not simply people who have received services or been through the justice system. They hold expertise about what it feels like to navigate those systems, where they fail, what helps, and what needs to change. That expertise needs to be part of the conversation. 

So, while the last year has been about strengthening what WAM does, the next 12 months are about making sure that strength translates into greater impact for more women and contributing to a broader shift in how we think about women, justice and community safety. 

That means continuing to expand our mentoring program across regional Victoria, strengthening our advocacy, embedding lived experience in our work, building sustainable funding and using what we learn to contribute to broader change. 

We know that meaningful change does not happen overnight. It happens through relationships. Through trust. Through women having someone alongside them while they work towards goals that matter to them. And it happens when we are willing to listen to the people who have lived the experience, question the assumptions that underpin our systems, and be open to doing things differently. 

Behind every number in this newsletter is a woman on that journey. 

The next chapter for WAM is about making sure more women have the opportunity to write what comes next.