Local family support officer wins Aspire award

Ms Langford has spent the last few years researching the link between domestic violence and youth violence in the Peel region as well as ways to reduce violence and abuse at home.

She said Peel has the second highest rate in domestic violence in Western Australia, meaning that the pattern can repeat itself in younger generations that witness violence at home.

She said families in WA are not getting the help they need to overcome domestic violence and there is a need to raise awareness, network between associations and get funding to create a specialised program to tackle the situation.

The Aspire scholarship gives each category winner $5,000 to spend on going to conventions of their choice anywhere in the world to bring the knowledge back to Australia.

Ms Langford was given the good news during a ceremony breakfast last week.

“Because the Mandurah award was one of the very last ones to be announced you had to watch through all of these amazing people, professor this and professor that all doing such amazing mind-blowing work,” she said.

“When my name came out it I was really shocked, really shocked. I was almost in tears actually.”

Ms Langford said she is going to use some of the scholarship money to attend the Third Indigenous Stop Domestic and Family Violence conference in Adelaide in September, but she said she is doing some research on other conferences overseas that focus on youth violence to go in the future.

Her role as an awarded candidate would also include lobbying during conferences interstate and overseas to promote the Peel region and bring events and conferences to the area.

City of Mandurah Mayor Marina Vergone congratulated Ms Langford for her achievements and said they hope to bring a family and youth violence event to Mandurah in the future.

“Tanya will be a strong advocate for Mandurah, with the hope of bringing an event here in the future which focusses on family and domestic violence, which in turn will increase our knowledge base and go a long way towards helping our community,” she said.