Brisbane South PHN-commissioned program wins 2026 Australian Good Design Award for Social Impact
A model that helps general practices recognise, respond to and refer people experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence has won a 2026 Australian Good Design Award in the Social Impact category.
Supporting the Primary Health Care Response to Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence has been recognised in the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards, Australia’s longest-running international design awards, for excellence in design, innovation and impact.
First co-designed in the southern Brisbane region in 2018, where it was known locally as Recognise, Respond, Refer, the model now operates across 12 Primary Health Networks (PHNs) through a national pilot led by Brisbane South PHN.
This year’s Awards are presented under the theme ‘Design that Leads’ — celebrating the critical role of design in navigating complexity, driving innovation and creating positive change.
Connecting general practices with specialist family and domestic violence support workers
General practice can be an important place for people experiencing violence to first seek help for it. The program supports GPs, practice nurses and staff to build the confidence and skills to recognise and sensitively discuss the patient’s experiences and ongoing risk of violence and abuse and to access a trusted connection to specialist support to navigate next steps for help.
The model’s Specialist Linking Role helps build that connection. ‘Local Links’ or similarly named roles under the program are social workers or specially trained support staff who provide advice and support to general practice teams, connecting GPs and their patients with local specialist family, domestic and sexual violence services.
Brisbane South PHN Deputy Chief Executive Officer Julie Couper said the recognition highlighted the importance of connecting services around people’s needs.
“Family, domestic and sexual violence affects people’s health and wellbeing, and an effective response requires health and specialist services to work together. This model gives general practices a trusted connection to specialist support, so people seeking help aren’t left to navigate separate systems on their own,” Ms Couper said.
Awards jury praises the program’s cross-sector integration for sustained impact
The Australian Good Design Awards Jury highlighted the Specialist Linking Role and the model’s capacity to strengthen as it expands. Comments from the Jury follow below:
“The Jury recognises this program as a genuinely rare achievement in public health: a framework that strengthens as it scales rather than weakens.
“The Jury commends the innovative Specialist Linking Role, which provides a single trusted point of connection between previously siloed sectors, solving a structural problem that policy alone has failed to address for decades.
“With seven years of continuous refinement across 12 Primary Health Networks, this co-designed model has successfully turned general practices into systematic gateways for family violence support, demonstrating meaningful impact for victim-survivors while building capacity and confidence among primary healthcare professionals. The Jury congratulates the team on this exemplar of integration and sustained commitment to addressing a critical public health crisis.”
A program response shaped by the people closest to the issue
Brisbane South PHN commissioned The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) in 2018 to help design primary care’s role in an integrated response to domestic and family violence.
The design drew on the experiences of victim-survivors, primary care professionals and specialist services, with further work exploring the needs of people from diverse communities.
The project’s design partners are Brisbane South PHN, TACSI, Integrate Place, Centre for Women & Co., Micah Projects and YFS.
Program Manager, Susan Conaghan, who leads this work for Brisbane South PHN, said ' The co-design process showed us that victim-survivors want primary health care professionals to be compassionate and connected to specialist support services. By bringing together people with lived experience, general practice teams and the family, domestic and sexual violence sector, we were able to understand the challenges each group faced and design a program that responds to those realities.
'The result is a more practical, collaborative approach that helps primary care play a stronger role in supporting victim-survivors,' Ms Conaghan added.
Evidence from an interim evaluation done by the Sax Institute showed that participating PHNs engaged 1,124 general practices between 1 July 2022 and 30 April 2025, resulting in over 1,500 supported referrals to specialist family, domestic and sexual violence services for their patients.
We recognised there was limited support for general practice and other primary health care services to play a meaningful role in the system response to family, domestic and sexual violence, despite being trusted points of contact for many victim-survivors. Through co-design with victim-survivors, primary health care professionals and specialist FDSV services, we gained valuable insight into the kind of response people wanted and needed from their GPs, as well as the barriers services faced in working together. Those perspectives directly shaped the program, ensuring it was practical for clinicians, responsive to victim-survivors’ experiences, and strengthened connections between primary care and specialist support services.
—Susan Conaghan, Program Manager | Family support programs, Brisbane South PHN,
Ms Couper said the award also recognised the sustained collaboration needed to improve how systems respond.
“Brisbane South PHN’s role as national lead is to support shared learning while keeping the response grounded in local communities. Lasting change depends on that combination: a clear model, strong local relationships and the willingness to keep refining it. This recognition belongs to the victim-survivors, practice teams, specialist services and design partners who have shaped and sustained the work,” she said.
Find out more
Learn more about Brisbane South PHN’s Local Link program and other support for family, domestic and sexual violence programs on our website.
If you or someone you know is experiencing, or at risk of, family, domestic or sexual violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800respect.org.au.
In an emergency, call 000.