This week is Homelessness Week, and around our State, there are hundreds of women and children living in temporary accommodation — in refuges and safe houses, with friends and extended family — having fled the threat of violence in their own homes. Many more cannot leave as they have nowhere else to go.
Earlier this week, we learned yet another woman has died an alleged victim of family and domestic violence.
We know one in four women experience violence by an intimate partner or family member in their lifetime. Until recently an average of one woman per week was murdered in Australia by her current or former partner, which alone is a shocking statistic, but so far in the 32 weeks of 2023, there have been 42 deaths. As Alison Evans from the Centre for Women’s Safety and Wellbeing pointed out this week, we should all feel ashamed. I agree.
As a society, we have failed these women; and now, we all have a role to play to eliminate family and domestic violence.
Many of WA’s family and domestic violence services are at breaking point. It’s a picture of high demand, accommodation shortages, community dysfunction, confusing support options, geographical challenges, and inadequate resourcing for services.
Anglicare WA’s family and domestic violence co-ordinated response services in regional areas report this crisis regularly. Working in collaboration with WA Police and child protection officers, the teams face demand well beyond per capita rates of the city, and with a fraction of the staff resources of metropolitan areas.
Across the entire Great Southern, there is just one women’s refuge, with capacity for only four women and their children, at any one time. The Albany Women’s Centre is always at capacity, with the next refuge nearly 300km away.
For men in WA seeking help to voluntarily address their violent and coercive behaviours, they are unlikely to be able to access any assistance. Internationally recognised as a critical element to addressing family and domestic violence, men’s behaviour change programs are in grossly short supply, and those that do exist are almost exclusively for men in the justice system and prisons.
Family and domestic violence is a deeply complex social issue, but the solutions are not a mystery.
International and local evidence points to successful approaches requiring four key elements: prevention; early intervention; crisis; and recovery services. Yet with consistent gaps and under-resourcing across these four areas, it’s no wonder we are seeing more cases of family and domestic violence and more extreme incidents.
We know a cross-government commitment to action is required, where each level of government — local, State, and Federal — play their part to prevent and address this scourge.
WA already has a commendable 10-year strategy to reduce family and domestic violence that includes focus areas of strengthening Aboriginal family safety, the need to act now, primary prevention, and system reform. The first action plan to consolidate and operationalise the strategy expired in June 2022 and the second action plan is yet to be released.
The State Government has clearly taken important steps to tackle this issue: appointing the first ever dedicated minister for the prevention of family and domestic violence, building new women’s refuges and FDV hubs, and increasing support services. What is abundantly clear is that this is not enough, not even close.
If we want the deaths to stop, we must double or triple our existing response across the four areas. Incremental improvements are not keeping up.
We must immediately resource and develop the second action plan, with substantial additional funding and expanded programs to address gaps in our system. Simultaneously, we must invest in primary prevention. Community education is essential in the workplace, community, and in our personal lives to promote healthy and respectful relationships and to support families impacted by this violence.
Community service providers, academics and those with lived experience met this week for crisis talks — and have invited the Premier, Treasurer and Minister for Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence to meet urgently to agree on a way forward.
WA is a wealthy and prosperous State. We have a collective obligation to ensure a community where no women or children fear harm in their relationships, their families, or in their homes.
Philippa Boldy is services director at Anglicare WA.