Domestic Violence NSW (DVNSW) has called on the NSW government to invest in the construction of 5,000 social housing properties every year for the next 10 years to address the significant shortage of long-term affordable housing for women and children who have suffered domestic and family violence (DV).
“Without additional social housing vulnerable women and children will remain in crisis and transitional housing for much longer than is appropriate and often with nowhere to go afterwards,” said Delia Donovan, Interim CEO of DVNSW.
“This creates additional stress and anxiety for women and children who have escaped abuse only to be in constant fear of the risk of homelessness or actually finding themselves faced with a dire choice of either homelessness or in some cases being forced to return to the perpetrator.”
DVNSW is also asking for a 20 per cent lift in funding to specialist homelessness services (SHS), coupled with a minimum five-year contract.
This injection of funds would help SHS providers, which include women’s refuges, to support the surge of women and children requiring support during Covid-19 and also to handle the increased complexity of their cases.
“This [complexity] has included an increase in the level of violence women are experiencing before the point at which they seek help,” Ms Donovan said, “and, most concerning, an increase in the use of weaponry.”
Feedback from DVNSW members shows it has been very difficult for women to access support because they are in isolation with the perpetrator.
A report from 1800Respect also indicated a significant increase in people accessing its website after midnight.
“That tells you a bit around how victims of violence are having to think about how they’re going to reach out to get help,” Ms Donovan said.
“It’s an extreme level of violence – and most concerning.”
In such a tough climate, Ms Donovan said, providers are extremely overstretched and many had been working for years before the Covid-19 crisis with no increase to their funding.
“They’re very passionate, very expert, very exhausted.”
Ms Donovan said one provider of specialist, domestic violence trauma counselling in the Eastern Suburbs had seen a 111 per cent increase in new referrals in March 2020 compared to March 2019.
Another Sydney-based service reported that two women on Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) it had been supporting had exhausted their temporary accommodation quota. Neither woman was eligible to transition to long-term housing because they held TVPs and were not Australian citizens.
“Their only option now is either to return to the perpetrator or to sleep rough with their children. And this means they will probably be on a park bench, the service told us.”
Crucial work
Ms Donovan said SHS staff do crucial work under challenging conditions. This often means providing services to a far greater number of vulnerable people than they are contracted to support and working in a climate of uncertainty in which they have to accept contracts with no guarantee of ongoing funding.
“I’ve worked in services where you’ve got the most incredible people doing lifesaving work and, every year, they don’t know if they are still going to be doing that work – and that’s actually not good for sustainability and attachment with clients.”
Longer-term five-year contracts, or rolling contracts, she said, would support services in their business planning – assisting with staff retention, measuring the success of interventions, and adapting service models to meet the changing needs of their clients.
DVNSW also believes 20 per cent is the minimum that should be added to SHS budgets to ensure providers are well-equipped to address long-term trauma, offer meaningful therapeutic help, and transition clients carefully out of their services into longer-term housing.
“This is why we are calling on the government to provide sufficient funding and certainty to the sector to assist in the development of a sustainable service model.”
Ms Donovan said building the additional affordable housing would put jobs into the economy and women and children escaping domestic violence into homes.
“It is estimated that 85,000 construction jobs and 97,000 small or medium-sized businesses are at risk due to the economic impacts of Covid-19. By taking this approach, the NSW Treasury can stimulate the economy whilst providing critical long-term affordable housing to women and children who have suffered domestic and family violence.”
Recent funding from the federal government of $150 million (announced in March) and of $3 million (announced in mid-July) provided to some DV services as part of its Covid-19 response was welcomed by a sector struggling to meet demand.
We’re grateful, Ms Donovan said, and it’s “certainly progress”.
However, women’s health services were yet to receive any additional funding during Covid-19, she said, and positive longer-term outcomes for DV survivors could only be achieved through the provision of sustainable housing options such as public and affordable housing.
Housing pathway needed
Ms Donovan said DVNSW’s 2020 housing policy launched in mid-July identified the absence of a “housing pathway” for DV survivors but official homelessness statistics suggested that government funding for an additional 5,000 social housing properties per year would go a long way to providing a meaningful response to the housing crisis.
There was also a need for DV violence research, data and literature that examines women’s journeys between different points in the domestic violence response system and indeed the long-term outcomes for women who access these services.
“The funding we get is a drop in the ocean if we think about the importance of prevention, of early intervention work, of crisis work, and then the work after the crisis [with both women and children], which we never talk about.”
Ms Donovan also said she hoped the Morrison government’s parliamentary inquiry into domestic violence would include an investigation into the impact of the Covid-19 crisis, put survivor voices at the forefront, and identify gaps for marginalised communities by listening to the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, elders in the community, and the LGBTIQ+ community, which are often excluded.
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Domestic Violence NSW was formerly the NSW Women’s Refuge Movement. The organisation dates back to March 1974 when a group of feminist activists started the first women’s refuge in NSW named Elsie, which was in Glebe.
