Four domestic violence murders in three months shocked Canberra in 2015. They were the catalyst for change

In the five years since Tara Costigan was murdered with an axe by her former partner as she cradled their one-week-old baby, there has been significant changes to the way Canberra has addressed violence against women and children.

Her case, and the three murders - two women and one man - that followed in close succession in 2015, were the catalysts for change.

The coronial inquest into Ms Costigan's horrific murder concluded in early 2018 with a recommendation that timely notification be provided to a victim when an order had been served, which recognised that an order can trigger violence. There was also a recommendation to review court and police processes.

ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates said she warmly welcomed the introduction of the text message alerts to victims in 2019.

"Often it can take a long period of time for an order to be served, because of the requirement for it to be served in person," Ms Yates said.

"It can be a time of escalated concern for the applicant and as was the case in Tara's matter, the serving of the order can escalate the risk."

Ms Yates said knowing when an order has been served can allow the victim to make decisions around the safety of themselves and their children.

That safety planning now starts when the victim enters the court or approaches police to apply for a family violence order. The Family Violence Intervention Program provides support to ensure there are risk assessments and safety planning in place for when that order is served.

"Is this order going to increase your safety? Obviously it can never be for the applicant to know, and the respondent is completely responsible for their own conduct. But it's important to explore that based on the applicants knowledge of their conduct. If someone is going to go ahead with an application, it is vital they've got a safety plan," Ms Yates said.

That safety plan should include practical things like where the victim will be when the order is served, will they be able to return home or will they need other accommodation in the short term or on an ongoing basis. Do they have enough credit to call someone if they need to? Will their children be safe at school?

It was one of the most significant things that came from Ms Costigan's case. Up until her murder, she was subject to controlling behaviour, but not physical abuse.

"Previoulsy it was like, 'well he's never hurt you before so he's not going to kill you'," Ms Yates said.

"But in fact we have to be looking at the broader range of behaviours when assessing the risk of a woman and her children being murdered. It is incredibly sad, it is heartbreaking that it took Tara's death for us to come to that realisation," Ms Yates said.

One of the steps in the ongoing process to improve safety for women and children in Canberra is to progress towards plain language in domestic violence orders to help promote compliance, and provide the perpetrator with information about support services, Ms Yates said.

Working with perpetrators of domestic violence is something the ACT has introduced with the Room for Change program, run by the Domestic Violence Crisis Service. The long-term, voluntary program aims to educate men around how to stop abusing the people they say they love.

Last year, Coordinator-General of Family Safety Jo Wood helped bring together experts to discuss innovative ways to get perpetrators to address their use of violence.

Ms Wood was appointed in October 2016 to the mammoth task of driving the changes to address domestic violence.

She was tasked with boosting the capacity of services to identify and react to early warning signs of domestic and family violence. Her role is to create a safer Canberra.

Ms Wood said she's proud of the sustained commitment the ACT has shown to tackling domestic violence over the past five years.

One of the first areas of focus was to offer better detection and early intervention of possible cases of domestic violence in pregnant women and new mothers, by giving health workers the training to know how to respond to signs of violence and coercive behaviour.

"More than half of women who experience violence experience it during pregnancy," Ms Wood said.

She co-designed the Family Safety Hub, a collaborative network designed to pinpoint where victims were already seeking help, and bolster the knowledge within existing services to respond.

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The initial idea for the hub was to be a single-service place where victims of domestic and family violence could access help. But research told them that wouldn't work.

"Just creating a place with a sign on the front door saying 'This is where you seek help' wasn't going to work," Ms Wood said. She said women seek help from services with whom they already have a trusting relationship.

"So we're integrating help across all the places where people seek help [for other issues], bringing help to people where they're already engaged so they don't have to go and find it."

Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence Yvette Berry said in a lot of ways, the ACT is leading the nation in its violence prevention work, particularly through the men's behaviour change program Room for Change. But, she said, there's still plenty of work to be done.

"The real key to change is through a whole-of-community change in culture, attitude and behaviour," Ms Berry said.

It's something that can take decades, even generations to achieve. Now, training is being rolled out to 21,000 public servants across Canberra to help them identify signs of domestic abuse.

"[The signs] can be discrete and are not just about physical abuse, but could also be about coercion and control. The training is to help public servants know what to look for and how to help," Ms Berry said.

"The government, the services and the community have learnt so much over the years about family and domestic violence and the approach to reduce and eliminate it is constantly evolving in response," she said.