MARAM Maturity Framework

FSV is a Victorian government agency that delivers policies to enhance Victorians’ safety, including the Family Violence Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management (MARAM) Framework. MARAM is a complex policy framework developed after the 2016 Royal Commission into Family Violence. This framework, which aims to create a shared understanding of family violence, applies to services across Victoria, ranging from specialist family violence crisis organisations to schools and hospitals. It’s a good policy, but it’s complicated. Different teams within different organisations have different levels of obligation. Organisations felt overwhelmed and were unsure how to progress towards MARAM alignment.

PG delivered a co-designed MARAM Maturity Toolkit. This included three products: The Maturity Model, the six-poster Roadmap and the interactive Self-Assessment Spreadsheet. The Maturity Model was a plan-on-a-page. A top-level summary of the MARAM maturity levels and their characteristics, presented in simple language. The Roadmap was a series of six posters outlining the journey to improving MARAM alignment. These posters included details on implementation steps. The Self-Assessment spreadsheet was the tool with the most detail. It enabled users to assess their organisations across multiple internal services and operations. It generated a bespoke action plan based on the user’s submitted information.

The multi-tiered Maram Maturity toolkit was an impactful solution because it recognised that different organisations had very different levels of obligation towards MARAM - and that people within those organisations had different levels of obligation, too. This toolkit could be an excellent model for other complex compliance and regulation spaces. The MARAM framework’s focus on information sharing and intersectional risk assessment is important for addressing the needs and barriers of victim-survivors. However, its complexity makes it hard to implement. These tools – co-designed with the people who will be using them – help break through that complexity.