Cathy Oddie worked for Centrelink for seven years, before moving on to work in the Superannuation and public mental health sectors. After her role as Business Development and Policy Coordinator at HESTA ended in 2019, Cathy embraced the opportunity to become Monash Health’s first ever Family Violence Lived Experience Consultant within their Mental Health Family Violence Project Team. She then went on to work in Emergency Service response at the Police Assistance Line. Cathy was employed for Berry Street in the roles of After Hours Specialist Family Violence Practitioner, Positive Shift Program Facilitator and Family Safety Contact Practitioner.
More recently, she has been the Intake and Client Engagement Practitioner at Bloom Well-being which is trauma specialist counselling service and a Senior Family Violence Practitioner with Goulburn’s Orange Door virtual team.
From 2007- 2022, Cathy was a volunteer Survivor Advocate with Safe Steps Family Violence Response Centre. This role led Cathy to make a submission and give evidence at the 2015 Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence. Her testimony resulted in two of the final 227 Recommendations, one of which led to the Review of the Victims of Crime Assistance Act which was tabled to Victorian Parliament in 2018. The dismantling of the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal and upcoming implementation of the new Financial Assistance Scheme is as a direct result of Cathy's evidence to the Royal Commission. Cathy made a submission and was called to give evidence to the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee: Inquiry into Victoria’s Criminal Justice System in 2021. She has also been involved in numerous consultation and co-design processes on legislation and policy reforms including the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) Stalking Inquiry and VLRC Improving the Response of the Justice System to Sexual Offences Report.
Cathy was on the working group and co-evaluated the DHHS Pilot Project “Family Violence Survivor Employment Pathways Program” and was also on the expert reference group for WIRE’s “Teachable Moments” Research Project, which was a project which had a focus on financial abuse. In 2017, she was elected to the Committee of Management for Project Respect, which is an organisation which provides assistance and support to women experiencing exploitation, abuse or human trafficking in the sex industry. Cathy was also a Director on the board of Violence Free Families from 2021-2022. During her time at HESTA, she was successful in receiving a grant from Victorian Women’s Trust to improve the economic outcomes for women from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds through bringing together the organisations HESTA, ICAN, Fitted for Work and WAM to deliver a targeted financial literacy for women program using a narrative story-telling approach. In 2019, Cathy became the first official survivor ambassador for Mettle Women Inc. This is an organisation which provides safe and accessible employment and opportunities to women who have experienced family violence and homelessness to establish financial independence. In 2021-2022, Cathy facilitated Domestic Violence and Coercive Control Masterclasses around Australia. Also in 2021, she became a published author, having a chapter about her lived experience of family violence included in the short story compilation: “Love, Bruises and Bullsh!t”.
Cathy was appointed to the Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety’s Victim of Crime Consultative Committee as a Victim Representative in 2020. In addition to this appointment, in 2020 she joined Victoria Legal Aid's "Specialist Family Violence Court Project" Steering Committee, and in 2021 the “Legal Services in The Orange Door Project” Project Control Group as a Family Violence Lived Experience Consultant. She was on the working group designing the new Victims Legal Service which commenced operation in March 2023. Between 2023-2024, Cathy was a membe