Introduction
Family violence is a leading cause of homelessness in Australia (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW, 2017, 2018). Forty per cent of people assisted in 2016–17 by Australian homelessness agencies (which includes women’s refuges) were seeking help because of family and domestic violence (AIHW, Reference Austin2018: 43) and, of these, 94 per cent were women and children (AIHW, 2018: 59). The number of people assisted by homelessness agencies resulting from family violence has ‘increased by 10 per cent on average each year, over the past five years’ (AIHW, Reference Austin2018: 59).
Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Personal Safety Survey indicates one in four women in Australia have experienced at least one violent incident by an intimate partner (Cox, Reference Cox2016: 3) and one in twenty women (5.3 per cent) aged eighteen and over had experienced violence by a partner in the twelve months prior to the survey (Cox, Reference Cox2016: 83). About half of women who separated from a violent partner left several times before the final separation. Whether separating temporarily or permanently, nearly two-thirds (63.7 per cent and 61.8 per cent respectively) moved out of the home. While some women moved to another relatively stable house or rental property, the range of situations upon leaving home included staying with a friend or family member, in a refuge or other crisis accommodation such as a motel, caravan park, or boarding house, or sleeping rough on the street, in a car, tent or abandoned building (Cox, Reference Cox2016: Data Table A24). This data shows that mostly women, rather than violent partners, leave their home, and that a substantial number of those women cannot access suitable accommodation and support, and experience homelessness.
The research that informs this article was commissioned by the Victorian government in response to a recommendation of the Royal Commission into Family Violence (State of Victoria, 2016), established to improve Victoria’s response to family violence by reducing its incidence, holding perpetrators to account and supporting victims. Informing the Royal Commission was the pervasive nature of family violence, the causal role of gender inequality, and the need for coordinated government and community responses (Andrews, Reference Andrews2015). The research responded specifically to Recommendation 18, that:
The Victorian Government give priority to removing current blockages in refuge and crisis accommodation and transitional housing, so that victims of family violence can gain stable housing as quickly as possible and with a minimum number of relocations, are not accommodated in motels and other ad hoc accommodation, and spend on average no longer than six weeks in refuge and crisis accommodation (State of Victoria, 2016, Volume 1: 205).
The research brief was to produce evidence to inform policy and practice by investigating and making recommendations about: women’s and children’s access and barriers to specialist women’s family violence refuge and emergency accommodation; improving the refuge experience and support; and housing pathways when leaving refuge and emergency accommodation. This occurred in a context where the recent increased community focus on family violence in Australia, and particularly in Victoria where the research was undertaken, has increased demand for services. As a result of the Royal Commission, the Victorian government is putting billions of dollars into professional development and improved specialist women’s refuge and other infrastructure.
The impact of research on policy development is subject to debate, and key assumptions underpinning the evidence-based policy movement – such as that policy processes are characterised by rational decision-making and devoid of ideology – have been critiqued (Young et al., Reference Young, Ashby, Boaz and Grayson2002; Biesta, Reference Biesta2007; Watts, Reference Watts2014). It is evident that policy processes are ‘inescapably anchored in political values, persuasion, and negotiation’ (Head, Reference Head2016: 472). However, the use of social science to inform policy continues to be presumed in public policy discussions (David, Reference David2002; Head, Reference Head2016) and Australian policy workers continue to access academic research (Newman et al., Reference Newman, Cherney and Head2016).
The construction of family violence as a policy problem has a long history. Feminists, in particular, have generated changes in how family violence is understood: from a private matter to one requiring public action, and from a problem of battered women to one of violent men (Bacchi, Reference Bacchi1999; Murray and Powell, Reference Murray and Powell2011; Goodwin, Reference Goodwin, Bletsas and Beasley2012). Research about family violence should take account of these cultural and political issues, and this project does so by adopting a feminist lens congruent with the values approach of the government, which set the terms of reference for the Royal Commission and signalled an intention to contribute to change by highlighting family violence as a public policy issue, emphasising the causal role of gender inequity and pledging at the outset to accept the Royal Commission’s recommendations (Andrews, Reference Andrews2015; State of Victoria, 2016). Within this socially constructed context, then, this article is premised on the view that social science research can help to ‘understand, illuminate and explain’ (Young et al., Reference Young, Ashby, Boaz and Grayson2002: 218) social issues and inform social policy.
Further, this research contributes to explaining the work of specialist women’s refuges and highlighting their significance. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the importance of evidence in policymaking, and its particular uptake in Australia (O’Dwyer, Reference O’Dwyer2004), the work of women’s refuges is under-researched in the Australian context. While there have been some critiques of their work, little is known outside the sector about its nature, including what support they provide and how it assists women and children. Moreover, there is limited knowledge of the constraints women’s refuges face in their day-to-day work. The article contributes to critical debates about the operation of refuges and the need for specialist family violence services.
We contend specialist women’s family violence services remain central to family violence responses, despite insufficient recognition and a recent policy development trend towards mainstreaming approaches (Bacchi and Eveline, Reference Bacchi and Eveline2010; AWAVA, 2019). For example, while specialist refuges are used in Victoria, in New South Wales a changed approach was implemented from 2014 involving mainstreaming family violence support, whereby women escaping family violence and their children are now accommodated with women who are homeless for other reasons. Former family violence refuges and agencies without experience in family violence now support this combined cohort (valentine et al., Reference valentine, Zmudzki, Fotheringham and Smyth2017). Workers have reported that this contentious change has increased trauma for women and children escaping domestic violence, and decreased assistance provided, with services less focussed on safety and issues specific to domestic violence (Central News, 2017; Sydney Morning Herald, 2017; Heward-Belle, Reference Heward-Belle, Baines, Bennett, Goodwin and Rawsthorne2019).
Historically, in Australia and internationally, women’s refuges have provided safety, crisis support and accommodation to women and children and undertaken public advocacy and activism to promote awareness of the issue and obtain resources to tackle it (Walker, Reference Walker1990; Murray, Reference Murray2002; Weldon, Reference Weldon2002; Messing et al., Reference Messing, O’Sullivan, Cavanaugh, Webster and Campbell2017). International literature shows women using refuges reported programs to be ‘supportive’ and ‘effective’ (Sullivan, Reference Sullivan2016) where they received ‘a holistic response, committed service and advocacy without prejudice or judgement’ (Champion et al., Reference Champion, Gander, Camacho Duarte, Phibbs, Crabtree and Kirkby2009: 22). In the US, Israel, Canada and Korea, women reported refuges to be helpful – particularly in relation to providing services and safety – but also disempowering if restrictions are placed on their decision-making capacity (Robinson et al., Reference Robinson, Maxwell and Rogers2020). Few studies have examined the long-term impact of family violence services, but a study undertaken in Arizona applied a cost-benefit analysis to a women’s refuge and found that over a twelve-month period every dollar invested resulted in a fourfold saving in reduced suffering, health care, and other costs of family violence (Chanley et al., Reference Chanley, Chanley and Campbell2001). A review of literature concerning randomised controlled trials evaluating advocacy programmes for abused women found intensive advocacy resulted in decreased physical abuse more than one to two years after the intervention for women already in refuges (Rivas et al., Reference Rivas, Ramsay, Sadowski, Davidson, Dunne, Eldridge, Hegarty, Taft and Feder2015).
There are also critiques of refuges in relation to barriers to access and meeting the needs of specific groups of women including those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) (InTouch Multicultural Centre Against Family Violence, 2010; Spinney, 2014; Ghafournia, Reference Ghafournia2017; Ghafournia and Easteal, Reference Ghafournia and Easteal2019) and Indigenous (Wilson, Reference Wilson1996; Donelly et al., Reference Donelly, Cook, Ausdale and Foley2005) communities, women with disabilities (Healey, Reference Healey2013; Woodlock et al., Reference Woodlock, Healey, Howe, McGuire, Geddes and Granek2014) and women from regional and rural areas (George and Harris, Reference George and Harris2014; Campo and Tayton, Reference Campo and Tayton2015). To some extent, these challenges reflect historical legacies and resourcing constraints. Many refuges began as small, standalone services in the 1970s and 1980s when family violence was not widely recognised by the wider community, and most operated as inner city or suburban communal houses that accommodated around five women and their children (Murray, Reference Murray2002; Weeks and Oberin, Reference Weeks and Oberin2004). Over time they have strengthened their service delivery focus and developed into larger organisations using a variety of models (Weeks and Oberin, Reference Weeks and Oberin2004; Cohen, Reference Cohen2012; Chung et al., Reference Chung, Chugani and Marchant2016; Women’s Emergency Services Network, 2016; Theobald et al., Reference Theobald, Murray and Smart2017). Core and cluster models are being adopted to enable improved access and response (Nyhuis, Reference Nyhuis2018; Tzelepis, Reference Tzelepis2018). While there are programs for women who remain in their home (and the violent partner leaves) (e.g. Diemer et al., Reference Diemer, Humphreys and Crinall2017) – known in Australia as safe at home programs and elsewhere as sanctuary schemes – this research argues the ongoing need for refuges, firstly, because as yet there is not sufficient resourcing of such services and, second, in some situations the safest response is for the woman to leave their home.
Drawing on interviews and focus groups with 100 professional stakeholders and twenty-two service users, this article examines how Victorian women’s refuges provide assistance and the constraints they experience. We examine how services are provided, noting that while some challenges are being tackled, others remain. We then consider the implications for social policy. We acknowledge debates about the various terms used including ‘family violence’, ‘domestic violence’ and ‘intimate partner violence’ (Murray and Powell, Reference Murray and Powell2011). Here we use ‘family violence’ to specifically name violence against women during and after intimate relationships, reflecting its now common usage by government and others in Victoria. We use ‘refuges’ to name specialist women’s family violence supported accommodation services, sometimes known as ‘shelters’.
Overview of family violence refuges and crisis accommodation in Victoria
In Australia, and Victoria, women’s refuges are administered within a wider homelessness service system. Women’s refuges are differentiated from generalist (or mainstream) homelessness services by their underpinning gendered analysis, attention to issues of safety and risk, and targeted interventions to respond to family violence and associated issues. The work of Victorian women’s refuges remains inherently political, and, alongside other specialist family violence services, they operate from a rights-based approach that incorporates a feminist analysis of the gendered nature of family violence and principles of social justice (Domestic Violence Victoria, 2006; Bignold and Morris, Reference Bignold and Morris2018; Oberin, Reference Oberin2018). At the time of the research there were twenty-two women’s refuges located across metropolitan and regional Victoria including three for Aboriginal women, for a total population of nearly six million people.
From 2018, the Victorian government is establishing ‘safety and support hubs’ to improve accessibility and coordination of services for those experiencing family violence and/or requiring support with care of children and young people (Victorian State Government, 2017a). However, at the time of the research the primary entry point to refuge support and accommodation in Victoria was the 24-hour service Safe Steps, which triages for the level of risk a woman is experiencing to prioritise their response. As we shall see, many women do not receive a specialist family violence response and instead are referred to generalist homelessness services which are not specifically designed to assist women escaping violence but are the last resort for women and children where other systems have failed (Safe Steps, Reference Safe2015b). Homelessness services generally focus on accommodation rather than safety but do assist many women escaping violence, including those who do not disclose that they are escaping violence (EDVOS et al., 2015; Spinney and Zirakbash, Reference Spinney and Zirakbash2017). Homelessness services may also refer a woman to emergency accommodation, including a motel or boarding house, but there may be little other support. Some of these forms of accommodation are unsafe and highly unsuited to women and children seeking a family violence response (Murray, Reference Murray2011).
Victorian women’s refuges have a history of equating high security with secrecy of address (Theobald, Reference Theobald2014). This has involved women moving to a refuge far from their previous location, leaving employment and removing children from school. This approach is atypical of Australian women’s refuges in other states (NSW Women’s Refuge Working Party, 2003: 18) and has been the subject of critique (Theobald et al., Reference Theobald, Murray and Smart2017). Adopting secret locations has also occurred internationally, with most women’s refuges in the United States having confidential addresses, but this policy has been reassessed due to limited evidence that secrecy increases safety, and some refuges have become public to elicit community support and protection (Haaken and Yragui, Reference Haaken and Yragui2003: 60).
Similarly, in Victoria, the transition to core and cluster models enables innovative approaches to managing security issues and community engagement (Oberin, Reference Oberin2018). Aboriginal women’s refuges, for example, avoid secrecy of address and assist local women while still enabling security through the use of better safety planning, technological advances, twenty-four-hour staffing and community input into safety (Young et al., Reference Young, Andy and Doherty2018). Innovation has characterised the history of Victorian refuges (Theobald et al., Reference Theobald, Murray and Smart2017) with some pioneering service models prioritising client self-determination with regard to security and related issues (Austin, Reference Austin2018). However, in 2018, the majority of Victorian refuges continued to adopt secret addresses as a form of ‘high security’. As described below, the most restrictive high security refuges are not suited to all women. And while the shift from communal to core and cluster models improves conditions in refuges and promotes accessibility for diverse groups of women, there are still many redevelopments to be undertaken, the majority funded as a result of recommendations of the Royal Commission.
Study design
An expert reference group of government, community sector and consumer stakeholders guided the project and facilitated access to research participants (Murray et al., Reference Murray, Bullen, Watson and Theobald2017). RMIT University and La Trobe University Human Research Ethics Committees provided ethics approval. Fieldwork was undertaken in early 2017 with data derived from a combination of quantitative and qualitative sources. Aggregated client and program data from relevant agencies informed our analysis of qualitative data, which was collected in two stages. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with 100 stakeholders, representing forty service providers, government agencies, and peak bodies. They included a range of sectors in rural and metropolitan Victoria including family violence, housing and homelessness, disability, Aboriginal, LGBTIQ, health and mental health, immigration and refugees, child protection, and legal. The views of those who work in specialist women’s family violence crisis accommodation and refuges were sought and the majority of these services participated. Interviews were then conducted with another twenty-two stakeholders who were women with at least one experience of seeking refuge within the previous two years, with most occurring in the previous six months. This group, henceforth named ‘women’ to distinguish them from all other stakeholders who each held professional positions involved in responding to family violence, represented a convenience sample as recruitment came from services involved in the first stage of data collection. Nevertheless, care was taken to involve participants known to experience barriers accessing and exiting refuge accommodation including Aboriginal women, women without permanent residency, women with disabilities, and women with mental health conditions. The majority of women had accessed refuge and ranged in age from twenties to seventies. Some had accompanying children while others were alone. Women resided in metropolitan, rural and regional areas with some having relocated as a result of family violence.
The interviews and focus groups were in-depth and semi-structured. The study aimed to explore the circumstances in which women and children experiencing family violence seek crisis accommodation, and the service responses they receive. We did not interview children due to the limited time available: however, information about children was sought in all the research activities. Interviews and focus groups were digitally recorded and professionally transcribed, and participants were de-identified to protect their privacy. Transcripts were coded thematically with analysis involving an open coding approach allowing themes to emerge, which were then compared across the interviews and focus groups in order to refine and confirm the findings.
Findings
Forms of support refuges provide
Research participants reported that refuges provide multiple forms of support to women and children, including the provision of safety to assist them to rebuild their lives. A woman residing at an Aboriginal women’s refuge explained: ‘[W]e just needed to feel safe and we needed that person [refuge worker] to talk to’. While some support is provided in-house by refuge workers, refuges also help women access external services. Refuge workers reported they provide in-house intensive case-managed support informed by a feminist framework, where assessment and interventions are conducted in collaboration with a woman while supporting her to make decisions. Support for children is also provided and extends to enrolling them in school and meeting other needs including various forms of therapy. For example, one refuge worker explained how a case management approach incorporated interventions including advocacy to meet the material and emotional needs of a woman and her children:
We’ve got all the support systems in place, the kids are going to school, she’s working. At one stage she [had been] living out of the boot of her car … and we negotiated with housing to put her on the priority to get another house … and we’re also therapeutically involved with the two children.
Refuge workers support women to meet their social rights, including access to basic income and safe housing. They assist women with short, medium and long-term housing options including safe at home responses, private rental, and social and public housing. Some women stay in refuge while arranging safe at home responses, but others are not able to remain in their homes for safety, financial and trauma-related reasons, and where such programs are not available. Women who have experienced family violence are at increased risk of financial difficulty and poverty due to financial abuse before and after separation, restricted avenues for financial redress, costs of separation and dislocation, and loss of partner’s income (Cortis and Bullen, Reference Cortis and Bullen2016; State of Victoria, 2016). Stakeholders described interventions including making referrals to specialist family violence-related financial counselling which promotes perpetrator responsibility, assists with debt negotiation and provides education on financial literacy. One family violence service manager described a situation where a woman had a $50,000 credit card debt from her ex-partner committing fraud by forging her signature. The financial counsellor was able to reduce the debt to $10,000 with only one bank still refusing to waive it. Notably, the Victorian government has committed additional funds for family violence-related financial counselling and the development of family violence guidelines for utilities, telecommunications and finance services (Victoria State Government, 2016).
Stakeholders explained that women are actively supported to navigate the legal system regarding intervention orders, family court, victims of crime applications and – for women without permanent residency – immigration. However, limited access to legal funding for family violence and family court support deprives women of justice. Nevertheless, family violence workers reported activities such as contacting police, attending court, and referring to legal services. Some refuges have sought to enhance access by having community legal services run clinics onsite, which is more convenient and less intimidating. One manager of a refuge in regional Victoria explained this was important for women assessed as high risk to manage safety and advance attitudinal change about family violence:
[Y]ou need to bring all the services in to a secure site until it’s assessed that it’s safe for her to be outside … trying to get the services in place for her as quickly as possible and when she needs it rather than having to wait in limbo but also so that she … gets the message that the community actually doesn’t blame her for this and they’re willing to all come in and help us.
Individualised funding support (of up to $10,000, from the Victorian government following the Royal Commission) has been made available for women experiencing family violence and has been used at entry, during and upon exiting refuges; to uphold women’s rights and provide them with access to many resources. Specialist family violence workers have described this support as ‘life changing’. There was, however, a view among some stakeholders that difficulties accessing these funds could work against their usefulness.
In Victoria there is a recent but growing focus on the provision of therapeutic responses in refuges with women, children and infants (Victorian State Government, 2017b). Stakeholders spoke of the importance of trauma-informed perspectives underpinned by a feminist philosophy that recognise the gendered basis of family violence. However, this approach is currently inconsistent in refuges, in part due to funding restrictions and the need for further professional development (Gillespie, Reference Gillespie2018; Westhead and Hodges, Reference Westhead and Hodges2018). As one senior manager of a refuge explained:
[W]e don’t really do a lot to address the trauma in an ongoing way, or the recovery or the impacts that that trauma has … So I think we really need some longer term kind of support work that actually helps to change things for people in the long run.
A trauma-informed approach requires consideration of all levels of support required by women and children when assessing their needs, as well as supporting them to understand the impact of trauma on their lives. It also involves recognising the links between trauma and other signifiers such as alcohol and other drug (AOD) misuse and mental health problems (Braaf, Reference Braaf2012). Paradoxically – as discussed below – these difficulties can actually prevent women from accessing or remaining in refuge.
Stakeholders also identified that refuges participate productively in cross-sector partnerships between organisations, with workers outposted to agencies and the establishment of referral protocols in some areas (Hague and Bridge, Reference Hague and Bridge2008; Theobald et al., Reference Theobald, Murray and Smart2017). Successful collaborations were identified with housing and homelessness service providers designed to streamline women’s ability to access the private rental market. However, some participants raised concerns about the suitability of the private market for all women due to concerns about market rental costs. There was also evidence that collaboration facilitated secondary consultation and co-case management arrangements in partnership with agencies specialising in child protection, disability, AOD, mental health, health and legal services. These were described as improving access for women to specialist support provided externally to refuges.
Challenges and constraints
The most pressing challenge identified by stakeholders was the number of women and their children seeking refuge. Most of the approximately 95,000 calls to Safe Steps in 2015-16 did not result in clients being accommodated through the service (Safe Steps, Reference Safe2017a, Reference Safe2017b). Over half these women (52 per cent) were referred directly to family or friends or generalist homelessness services (rather than the specialist women’s refuges under discussion in this article) (Safe Steps, Reference Safe2017a). A further 16 per cent of calls to Safe Steps were from women seeking information and referral rather than accommodation (Safe Steps, Reference Safe2017a).
Even where women were assessed as experiencing risk requiring specialist crisis accommodation, most were unable to obtain this, indicating one of the major challenges facing women experiencing violence. In 2015-16 nearly one third (32 per cent) of callers to Safe Steps were initially ‘case-managed and accommodated’ through Safe Steps (Safe Steps, Reference Safe2017a). However, of this group, only 27 per cent went to crisis accommodation, including refuge and motels, 27 per cent returned home, 22 per cent were referred to homelessness services and 11 per cent went to stay with family and friends (Safe Steps, Reference Safe2017a). In 2015-16 on average fifty women and children were accommodated in largely unsupported motels each night funded by Safe Steps (Safe Steps, Reference Safe2017a).
The crisis support and accommodation system has not been able to meet the needs of all women requiring assistance (Weeks and Oberin, Reference Weeks and Oberin2004; Domestic Violence Victoria, 2015; Safe Steps, Reference Safe2015a). Inadequate funding for Australian women’s refuges (Weeks and Oberin, Reference Weeks and Oberin2004; Gander and Champion, Reference Gander and Champion2009; Theobald et al., Reference Theobald, Murray and Smart2017) combined with an overall shortage of emergency, social and affordable private rental housing for Australian households on low to moderate incomes exacerbate these conditions (Zufferey et al., Reference Zufferey, Chung, Franzway, Wendt and Moulding2016; Muir et al., Reference Muir, Martin, Liu, Kaleveld, Flatau, Etuk and Pawson2018; Yates, Reference Yates2017). There is a need for greater capacity in all forms of accommodation assistance (Braaf and Meyering, Reference Braaf and Meyering2011; Murray and Theobald, Reference Murray, Theobald, Chamberlain, Johnson and Robinson2014; Commonwealth of Australia, 2015; Šimonović, Reference Šimonović2017). This constrains women’s ability to exit into safe and sustainable accommodation and means refuges are often full, preventing access for others. As a refuge manager explained, this enhances the likelihood that women will become homeless and further exposed to violent situations:
[The] housing crisis affects us as well because there is nowhere else … for the women to go. And boarding houses and shared accommodation in that kind of environment is just not ideal. And that’s where they’ll be sent. Especially single women … and often the violent cycle starts again.
As noted above, a significant challenge is women and children being placed in motels and not receiving adequate emotional and practical support – especially if required out of business hours and during holiday periods. As a form of crisis response, motels are considered inadequate; but, due to lack of capacity, they have been used routinely for many years (Weeks and Oberin, Reference Weeks and Oberin2004). One refuge worker described how women can feel unsupported, which may result in a decision to return to an unsafe environment:
[T]hey end up feeling like they haven’t got the support from the services, they’re put in motels … for up to two weeks and … women come back from that motel accommodation … [and say] … the same thing, ‘we haven’t really had any support around us’. And I’m not saying they didn’t get any support but … their level of risk was high so then all they’re doing is sitting there stressing … [and] … they just go ‘I think I’ll just go back’.
Stakeholders also highlighted that generalist homelessness services are unable to provide the type of support needed by women fleeing family violence:
[Women are coming in for a family violence response and they’re ending up in a homelessness system that] is overloaded and under-resourced already, and not specialised enough to really put the family violence at the front and centre of the homelessness crisis and treating them like a homeless family or a homeless person so you get the same really poor options that don’t allow for the trauma that you’ve experienced.
Barriers are further increased in Victoria because most refuges are in secret locations and require women to move from their homes. This disrupts their lives, undermines their right to self-determination and work, and separates them from social networks – all of which hinders their capacity to relocate to a refuge. Historically, the aim of secret addresses in Victoria was to maintain women’s rights to safety when justice responses were grossly inadequate (Theobald, Reference Theobald2014). However contemporary policy promotes accountability of perpetrators and justice responses (Victorian State Government, 2017b), enabling management of security and safety without secrecy. While some participants maintain that secrecy of address is required to ensure safety, others identified the need for a diversity of service models. As one refuge worker participant explained:
We need to give women options … out in the community where we can put women with all the security … and we’ve also got that high-security refuge for someone who needs that face-to-face support … that bricks and mortar is only part of [it] the woman will know herself … what the risks are better than any of the workers and so I believe that we need to have a range of options for women.
Refuges advocated from their inception that family violence is a gendered issue and a feminist framework continues to offer critically important insights into the support needs of women and children. For example, stakeholders noted that therapeutic interventions are counter-productive when provided by mainstream services that do not incorporate trauma-informed and feminist approaches. According to one refuge manager this results in women being treated from a ‘deficit model’ – the one with the problem – rather than ‘as having a normal reaction to torture and abuse’. Refuges have argued for these approaches to be systemically embedded in refuges for women, children and infants (Bunston, Reference Bunston, Stanley and Humphreys2015; Gillespie, Reference Gillespie2018; Westhead and Hodges, Reference Westhead and Hodges2018). This would assist with promoting consistent approaches in refuges – indeed at present not all refuges have designated space for children and/or ready access to specialist children’s workers and, according to one stakeholder, ‘sometimes the kids fall through the cracks’. Family violence services spoke about cultivating partnerships to support children; however, the funding for this was often short-term and not sustainable.
Family violence services in general are not well-resourced to meet the needs of diverse groups, stemming from how the sector has evolved, an historical legacy of inadequate resourcing and the complexity of family violence. It became apparent in the research that the most disadvantaged women with complex needs are more likely to be excluded from refuge. The original communal service model was dictated by the limited building types available, which meant that decisions about access could be based on maintaining a workable household composition. This contributed to some groups such as LGBTIQ women (O’Halloran, Reference O’Halloran2015), teenage boys, and women with mental health conditions and problematic AOD being excluded from refuge.
Some stakeholders identified women with mental health conditions and problematic AOD use (Nicholas et al., Reference Nicholas, White, Roche, Gruenert and Lee2012) as ‘too complex’ to be accommodated in refuges. The reasons included: the communal environment; inadequate resources or training to manage detoxification; distances to a methadone dispensing pharmacy; lack of confidence accommodating a woman without medication; and risking triggering trauma responses in others. It is expected that the implementation of core and cluster refuge models will assist with access (Nyhuis, Reference Nyhuis2018). In the meantime, though, as one refuge worker explained, those most in need of support are least likely to access it:
[W]e know that most people who use drugs and alcohol, it’s a trauma response and yet we’ve got a system that says you can only be part of us if you don’t use any drug or alcohol even though we know you’re using it because you’re traumatised. So we don’t have a system that actually matches well the complexity of issues …
The built environment of refuges poses a barrier to entry for women and children with disabilities, such as those with restricted mobility, medical equipment, and accompanying carers. As Victorian refuges are redeveloped, the building design impediments are being removed and in 2017 the Victorian government agreed to make all refuges universally accessible (Victorian State Government, 2017b). At present, though, there is still variability between refuges. Women and children with disabilities, including intellectual disability, are particularly disadvantaged by the lack of resources in refuges to provide specialised support (Healey, Reference Healey2013).
Providing a culturally appropriate environment can also present a challenge for refuges. Aboriginal women are particularly disadvantaged (Olsen and Lovett, Reference Olsen and Lovett2016), especially when their refuges are full. Most interviewed for this project said that they would not go to a mainstream refuge because they do not meet their needs. The Victorian government has committed to building two new Aboriginal women’s refuges by 2020 (Victorian State Government, 2017b). Women from CALD backgrounds can experience the immediate barrier of language in receiving services (Spinney, 2014). The family violence service system can be confusing for women and the complexity is compounded for those with limited English skills. Muslim women in Australian refuges have reported negative experiences including discrimination stemming in part from an inability to maintain cultural and religious practices (Ghafournia, Reference Ghafournia2017; Ghafournia and Easteal, Reference Ghafournia and Easteal2019).
Women with no income, including those ineligible for social security benefits, face barriers to refuge entry because they are likely to remain for extended periods without funds to pay for expenses. These are typically women without permanent residency (Vaughn et al., Reference Vaughn, Davis, Murdolo, Chen, Murray, Quiazon, Block and Warr2015; Kristal, Reference Kristal2018) who are on a dependent spouse visa. However, some refuges accept these women who constitute a significant number seeking refuge. As one stakeholder explained, refuges endeavour to ensure their rights to safety and support are upheld but absorb expenses in doing so, relying on ‘goodwill’ rather than a systemic response, and the need far outweighs their capacity to respond:
[W]e’re one of the few refuges that take women that don’t have permanent residency … Which means obviously that they stay with us longer, they don’t have Medicare or they don’t have Centrelink, so there’s a whole lot of issues that you have to work with and often the moving on for them is harder because … they’re more isolated and have less connections. And also have no finances, absolutely nothing.
The Victorian government has acknowledged the issue and committed to investigating the provision of more support (Victorian State Government, 2017b; O’Brien, Reference O’Brien2018).
The research found that partnerships have generally been cultivated in context-specific circumstances and are not embedded systemically. Stakeholders reported areas where better collaboration was required, including with mental health, child protection and homelessness service systems. Stakeholders also identified a need for ongoing attention to improving collaboration and coordination at the structural level, noting that current governance structures are inadequate and outdated. The implementation of ‘safety hubs’ under the governance of Family Safety Victoria – a new coordination agency – is intended to facilitate improvements given their mandate to ensure integrated practice across justice, health, social and community services (Victorian State Government, 2017a).
Implications for social policy
This research addresses both how the policy problem of family violence is understood, and the need for additional evidence about effective supports for women. The evidence collected is not simply technical but includes subjective assessments by those providing these supports and women using them. The research contributes to highlighting family violence as a policy issue requiring public action, with improved refuge accommodation and support a central component of the response. It provides an example of how values can be embedded in research and its methodology (Stanhope and Dunn, Reference Stanhope and Dunn2011). It also illustrates how social constructionist perspectives on policy and evidence-based approaches can complement each other so that: ‘in an ideal policy-making setting, empirical knowledge shares the floor with experiential knowledge, values, ethics and the multiple interests, needs and desires stakeholders bring to the table’ (Stanhope and Dunn, Reference Stanhope and Dunn2011: 281).
The decades-long work of women’s refuges can inform improvements to the Victorian family violence service system (that are already occurring in response to recommendations of the Royal Commission) as well as in other jurisdictions. The theoretical and value-base of women’s refuges includes an underpinning gendered analysis, a focus on safety and support and a commitment to upholding human rights and social justice for women and children who have experienced family violence. In practice this includes ensuring women and children’s rights are realised through the provision of support and advocacy that is responsive to women’s expressed needs across the material, psychological and emotional realms. This approach must inform the workforce development needed to meet demand in both specialist and mainstream services. It should also inform the ‘safety hubs’ as they attempt to integrate and form partnerships between family violence and mainstream services. There is also opportunity to embed feminist trauma-informed models of care in workforce development combined with the provision of resources that enable consistent responses to women, children and infants across refuges. This could be resourced, as refuges have argued, through the core and cluster model redevelopment.
While further resourcing of the key entry point to the family violence service system occurred following the Royal Commission, at the time of the research, large numbers of women and children were unable to access appropriate crisis accommodation and support because there are insufficient services to meet demand. This results in access to services being regulated through a high-risk threshold so many do not gain access to support and/or are referred to precarious accommodation such as motels or with friends or family, or to generalist homelessness services which are not designed for their needs. This has serious implications for their lives including safety risks, relocations and disruption. Barriers are greatest for the most vulnerable women and children. The move to core and cluster models of refuge service provision is improving this situation. Further, the safety and support hubs may facilitate greater access to support including opportunities for early intervention. However, it must be noted that these changes, together with increasing community awareness about family violence, are likely to result in a significant increase in demand and this must be planned for and appropriately acted upon.
At exit from refuge, long-term housing issues present challenges in relation to affordability and sustainability. While there have been developments including head leasing and rental subsidies (Victorian State Government, 2017b), socio-economically disadvantaged women are unable to sustain these properties because they are only suitable long-term for those in employment. Such women require access to social and public housing to ensure their rights to housing are realised. While substantial investment in social housing has been made in response to recommendations of the Royal Commission (Victorian State Government, 2017b), more investment from the Commonwealth and states is needed to meet projected social housing requirements (Yates, Reference Yates2017).
Additionally, aspects of refuges themselves are important elements in need of change if all women’s rights to safety are to be realised. And as we have seen, some refuges are innovating through the development of core and cluster models, which enhance access for all women and children, particularly those with complex needs. Reconceptualising ‘high security’ should also occur to promote a service system that is inclusive of and responsive to women’s expressed needs and autonomy. High security should be differentiated from secrecy, and be managed through the use of safety planning, technological advances, twenty-four-hour staffing and community input into safety. This approach should also enable women to access refuge locally, which prioritises their right to self-determination and minimises disruption to their lives.
Conclusion
This research contributes both to changes in how family violence is understood and dealt with, and to greater knowledge about the work of women’s refuges. In these ways, it has shown how social constructionist and evidence-based approaches can both play a role in providing evidence for social policy. Moreover, this research has demonstrated that women’s refuges provide essential practical and emotional support to assist women and children to safely start rebuilding their lives following violence. In doing so, it has contributed to critical debates about women’s refuges and the need for specialist services.
Refuges are vitally important to women and children seeking safety after family violence but the research found many do not currently access them. Refuges face a number of challenges, linked to the history of their development and resource limitations. The overwhelming and increasing numbers of women and children seeking assistance is the greatest challenge, together with the lack of affordable long-term housing options. These factors lead many women being unable to be accommodated or being accommodated in insecure situations and/or where they do not have access to specialist assistance. While the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence has provided an opportunity for significant social policy reform in the area of family violence, including greater recognition of the role of refuges, these capacity issues will need further measures to tackle them, and refuges participating in this research were keen to see improvements.
Acknowledgements
Copyright © State of Victoria, Australia. Used with permission of the Department of Health and Human Services.
