Alex had always been dangerously jealous. If another man so much as greeted his wife, Hannah, Alex was prone to physically attacking them – and her. Once, on a holiday to the Gold Coast, Alex punched Hannah in the head, because of the way a friend’s husband had looked at her.
In the final months of their marriage, Alex developed a sinister fetish. The routine was the same every time: Alex would pin Hannah to the ground and choke her until she was almost unconscious, then cover her face with a blanket and jump on her body.
Convinced that Alex was preparing for her murder, Hannah summoned the courage to leave him. She knew she’d need protection from him, so she tried to get into a women’s refuge. But like many women fleeing domestic violence, Hannah was told there were no beds available, so she was given vouchers for a hotel in Kings Cross.
But Hannah was too afraid to be on her own. After a few nights in the hotel, she went to her friend’s place and tried calling the refuges again. Hannah called refuges across Sydney and nearby regional cities more than 10 times. But there was nowhere that could help her.
In the final months of last year, as Hannah was trying to find somewhere to stay, the women’s refuge system in New South Wales was in disarray. The state government had just completed a radical reform of its homelessness sector, putting all its services out to tender for the first time in 25 years. Women’s refuges were told they couldn’t just reapply for their own service – if they wanted to retain their refuges, they would have to show they could provide multiple services to all homeless people in their area. Services would no longer be exclusively for victims of domestic violence – they’d now have to cater to all types of homelessness.
Domestic violence refuges in crisis
The women’s refuge movement, which had wrested shelters away from faith-based charities in the 1970s, was decimated. According to the advocacy group, SOS Women’s Services, 75% of women’s shelters were transferred to faith-based charities.
The response from the refuge movement was one of shock, outrage and grief. Long-term shelter workers were dismissed en masse. Shelters shut down, changed their names, closed for renovations – for months, the system was a mess, and referral services were left in the dark. NSW police – who spend 40% of their time dealing with domestic violence – were left out of the reform process and not even told which shelters would be closing.
“It’s like, OK, we were making good use of that shelter, now we’ve got to find somewhere else to refer victims to,” assistant commissioner Mark Murdoch told the Monthly. “We understand there’s only so much money to go around, but if they were going to close or withdraw funding from shelters, it would have been nice to know in advance.”
In the country town of Bega in the state’s south-east, where homeless services were transferred to Mission Australia, the new operator was not even aware they now had a refuge to run, because the government didn’t include the Bega women’s refuge in the tender. As the government scrambled to allocate extra funding to the refuge, the local Bega Women’s Resource Centre was inundated with domestic violence victims who had nowhere to go.
“From June to December last year was just crazy; our numbers doubled,” says manager Gabrielle Powell. “I did try a couple of times to refer women to Mission, but they’d closed the refuge for renovations. Some women left the area, some were sleeping in cars, or in tents.” The nearest refuge, in Cooma, had been closed, and the next refuge was 90 minutes away. But even before the reforms, half of the women coming to refuges were being turned away, so beds were already scarce. “Some people got referred to Sydney. One Aboriginal lady even got referred to Darwin – she said, ‘it’s like sending me overseas!’ If you’re in a domestic violence situation, you’ve got kids in school, you’ve got a job, that’s just ridiculous.”
Roxanne McMurray, spokesperson for the advocacy group SOS Women’s Services, told Background Briefing that following last year’s reforms, services across the state were in a shambles. “You can only describe it as chaos. [Women’s shelters] told us it was breaking their heart that they had to turn people away. They knew that women were getting the runaround at the time, but there was very little that they could do.”
“We were all holding our breaths, hoping that things would settle down really quickly, and that there wouldn’t be a homicide.”
Back in the city, Hannah’s efforts to find protection in a refuge were all in vain. She took an apprehended violence order out against Alex, in the hope that would keep him away from her. Earlier this year, Hannah was found dead. Alex is now awaiting trial.
Advocates had for months been warning the government that cutting funds to women’s refuges would endanger women whose lives were seriously at risk. The government denies that funds have been cut; on the contrary, it says funding to the homeless sector has increased by 9.6%. That’s confusing to people working in the sector, who have seen services close and staffing numbers drastically reduced. “The government might be saying that overall there’s more money,” says Powell, “but on the ground in these services, it doesn’t seem like there is.”
Canberra funds uncertainty
In a statement to the Guardian, Mission Australia said that when the NSW government designed its Going Home, Staying Home program, it told them the reforms were being designed around a funding cut that was expected from the federal government. “The biggest impact on services … was that there was $29m less funding,” says a spokesperson for Mission Australia. “When the NSW government undertook these reforms, it was uncertain whether the commonwealth would commit to funding the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness beyond 30 June last year.”
The reforms were designed on the proviso that federal funds would be pulled. At the 11th hour, the federal government did decide to renew the NPAH, but only until 30 June this year. That money has been doled out to specialist homeless services as a one-off increase in funding, among other measures. But it looks set to run out – the federal government is widely expected to cancel the NPAH this year. The state minister for family and community services, Gabrielle Upton, says she has contacted her federal counterpart, Scott Morrison, requesting confirmation on the NPAH for 2015-16.
To compensate for the $29m reduction in funds, the NSW government increased its own contribution by around $14m. That leaves a $15m shortfall.
That’s why refuges like the one in Broken Hill, a town with one of the state’s highest domestic violence rates, have had to reduce staff by 60%, and cut opening hours from 24/7 to 9 to 5. Under the government’s “no wrong door” policy, the refuge also has to assist women who are homeless for other reasons, including drug and alcohol abuse.
The refuge that ‘teaches responsibilities’
Catherine Haven, managed by the Salvation Army, is the only refuge in Broken Hill. A new husband-and-wife team, Lieutenant Phillip Sutcliffe and his wife, Donna, arrived in Broken Hill two months ago to relieve the former managers, after getting diplomas in theology with the Salvos in Sydney. To cope with the new funding arrangements, the Salvos have introduced a strict payment regime – if women can’t pay for their accommodation, they won’t be allowed back.
Phillip is enthusiastic about this new arrangement, saying it teaches domestic violence victims to be responsible. “It’s not simply a service that they can use and abuse,” he told Background Briefing. “There’s actually responsibilities about them coming here now. We follow up on them, making sure they are making the payments for their accommodation.”
The Salvos have always had a $20 fee but, in the past, if women couldn’t pay, they’d simply wipe their debts. But the Sutcliffes have put a stop to that. “We have clients on our list that have racked up hundreds of dollars of debts from our service,” says Phillip.
“We run this program, because as part of our case management we want to help them get into sustainable accommodation. We don’t charge much – if you go to the private rental market, you pay 200 times what we’re charging a night, so if they’re not paying their nightly allowance here, we as an organisation can’t really write them a reference to say that they’re on-time payers.”
Julie Oberin, chair of the national peak body for domestic violence victims, Wesnet, says the Salvos’ rigid fee structure is not only counterproductive, but a rights issue.
“How can government-funded services deny women a roof and crisis bed because they haven’t been able to pay? It will act as a further disincentive for women to seek help.”
When Background Briefing visited Catherine Haven in February, the refuge looked deserted, and most of its rooms were empty, despite the town having one of the highest domestic violence rates in the state.
Phillip Sutcliffe’s background is in social work, but he says he has no experience in domestic violence. This generalist approach to domestic violence services is being replicated across the state, and is one of the key problems at the heart of the government’s reforms, says Greens member of the legislative council Mehreen Faruqi.
“Homelessness and domestic violence are two completely different areas. Of course, you can become homeless because of domestic violence, but the service and the support you need is quite different to someone just requiring a roof over their head. And I think if we really want to tackle domestic violence, and I’m sure that everyone does, you really have to cater for those services individually.”
Hannah and Alex’s names have been changed
• For information or advice on domestic violence, contact 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) or the Men’s Referral Service (1300 766 491).
• Background Briefing’s special investigation into funding cuts to the domestic violence sector aired on Radio National. You can listen to the full program here.
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