Fighting against gendered violence & alcohol harm

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Kym Valentine works with Safe and Equal, and was previously Chair of the Victorian Govt’s Victim Survivor Advisory Council. She is a Lived Experience Advisor to FARE – The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, the only independent organisation focussed exclusively on alcohol harm in Australia, Kym is also an accomplished TV and theatre actor. Read on for our change maker interview with Kym!

Describe your career trajectory and how you got to your current position.

I’ve been singing, dancing and acting my whole life, I started when I was just four years old. I was very, very blessed to be pretty much full-time employed in that industry, both on screen and on stage, which is a very rare thing. It’s all I’ve ever known, and it’s all I’ve ever been passionate about in terms of a career…until now. I never thought that I would love something as much as performing, so it’s such a privilege to have now found my purpose in family violence prevention. 

I started as a family violence advocate and a lived experience representative towards the end of 2019. I was doing a play and working with an actor who also worked in the family violence sector, and he said to me, “I think you should put your hand up for the role at the Victim Survivors Advocacy Council”. I had never in my life applied for a real job in the real world. I kept calling interviews, “auditions”! So I became a member of the VSAC then I was fortunate enough to become Chair of the VSAC in 2022. One of my passion projects when I started in this sector was the relationship between alcohol and family violence. I’m now working with the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) as a consultant and with Safe + Equal as a sessional facilitator advisor, wellbeing coordinate, survivor advocate and research officer. I’m also still working with Family Safety Victoria, and I work with Victoria Legal Aid and Victoria Police. I teach acting, mostly at night, at the Australian Film & Television Academy. And I’m a mum!

What does this role mean to you? 

This is where I was always meant to be, everything I’ve done has led me here. It’s 100% my purpose and it gives value to everything that has come before it. It’s my every waking (and sleeping) moment. I live, breathe, eat and sleep family violence prevention. I’ll never get over the honour of being able to do this and it is all I want to do for the rest of my life. 

Take us through a typical day of work for you.

There is no typical day and that’s what I love about it. Sometimes I call myself a vending machine: part of the gig is that I’m available whenever needed (that’s why my teaching is at night!). 

Most of my engagements and consults come up in an ad hoc way, there’s no set amount of work or hours or days or times. So many things go on all at once: I can be doing work internally with government, such as high-level advocacy around policy reform, or I can be doing consults with community organisations, with the commercial sector, or media. Another part of what I do is creating the safety for other victim survivors, so that might be me consulting with organisations on how they can do that, and working with victim survivors who are participating.

Then I’m putting courses together and lessons together for my teaching, packing school lunch and like every other mum thinking about what to cook for dinner tonight.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve encountered in your career, and how did you overcome it?

I represent lived experience, I don’t represent theory, ideology, academics. My lived experience and the lived experience of other survivors that I have been blessed to gather along the way, and whose voices I move forward with mine, cannot be denied, minimised, nor rejected. And it’s just as valuable, if not more valuable than academic theory.

There’s a certain amount of academic elitism in the sector, and the obstacles and barriers I’ve faced in getting the ‘technical’ qualifications has been difficult. For example, doing 200 hours of unpaid placement as a single mother is almost impossible.

I want to do this work full time, but there are some challenges around making that happen. I want to get the qualifications to cement myself in this sector so I will continue to try and find pathways to make that happen. Safe and Equal have been helpful in helping me work towards overcoming this barrier.  In working with them, I am gifted the opportunity to participate in all their training’s which is like Christmas day for me. 

It still strikes me as hypocritical that I am considered qualified and often engaged to advise on the training of the family violence workforce and yet at the same time I don’t hold the minimum qualifications to be a part of the workforce. 

A big challenge in the family violence sector is the system it exists within, so I’m always peeling back the layers to find where the barriers are to change. Ultimately to face the challenge that is solving family violence, I think we need to challenge the status quo, and always keep asking more questions. 

Sometimes I think, why does it take ‘Libby Kennedy from Neighbours’ to say these things? Funnily enough, Libby fought for justice, too. Sometimes when I need a little extra motivation, I wear her shoes. 

If you could go back in time, what piece of advice would you give yourself as you first embarked on your career? 

I’ve been working since I was four years old. My whole life as an actor I was always speaking other people’s words, and it look me a long time to trust my own. 

I know what it’s like to be the most affected by something and no one hearing what I had to say. I distinctly remember as a little girl thinking, when I’m big, I’ll say the things. And someone will listen. 

There are also adults who find themselves in a reality they didn’t choose, and sometimes choice isn’t so easily available. If things have been hard for me when I’m privileged, how must it be for other people?

So, my advice to my younger self would be: It’s ok to be scared. You don’t have to know it all to know enough and to be involved in the conversation. Do it scared. The confidence never comes before, it only every comes after. 

And ask the questions most people want to know the answers to. If you’re thinking the question, chances are someone else is too.

There’s no time to waste. Abandon imposter syndrome. Say the things.

How do you stay motivated to work in this field? 

I don’t have to put in effort to stay motivated, I just am. I’ve always had a fighting spirit. I get far more out of this work than it takes out of me. It fuels me, I don’t have to fuel it. On days when I need a little bit of energy, there are so many things to draw inspiration from: My Mum, my cousin/brother Joel, the incredible people I get to work with, my own experiences and people who’ve caused my experiences, other victim survivors and the people who cause their pain. The bullies. 

In a nutshell: the changes that I’ve seen motivate me, but the changes I haven’t seen also motivate me. I’m always looking for what we can improve. I have an aversion to injustice, and a natural inclination to want to help and improve. I don’t get disheartened, I get inspired; if something didn’t work going through the front door, let’s go through the window.

How do you unwind after work?

Growing up my whole life acting on a soap, I’m used to being in emotional discomfort, but self-soothing is not something I’m good at naturally. As taxing as my current work is, it’s far easier than ‘wringing it out’ on the tele! Nowadays when I teach, I always say it’s one thing to get yourself into a state, but how do you get yourself out of it. 

To unwind, I apply the same tactics that I do for acting: Go through your five senses and find one thing that’s good for your wellbeing. Touch: I’ve got a blanket that reminds me all is well. Sound: Music will get you wherever you want to be. Smell: it could be putting on incense. See: watch some “chewing gum for the brain”, something trashy! And the best cure all is to kiss my love. 

What was the last thing you: watched, Read, & Listened to?

Watch: I don’t watch a lot of acting because if I watch it it’s like I’m working. But lately I’ve been going on a Julia Louis-Dreyfus deep dive. Go watch Veep if you haven’t already!

Listen: I love listening to my heroes in this sector, Micaela Cronin, Minister Williams, Tarang Chawla, Kate Fitz-Gibbon Jess Hill, Conor Pall, Micheal Salter, Jackson Katz and my amazing mentor Caterina Giorgi from FARE.  

To tune out or leave the day behind, I love dancing around the kitchen with my love and my kids, preferably to actual music like classic 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. 

Read: It can be a lot of scripts but these days its mostly family violence stuff – research, backgrounders, reports. Even on my socials, everything in my algorithm is family violence too, I must keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on. There is lot of great stuff on the FARE and Safe and Equal Websites. I recommend subscribing to both of their newsletters.





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