WA domestic violence services face cuts as calls for help skyrocket

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WA domestic violence services face cuts as calls for help skyrocket

By Daile Cross

As WA domestic violence support organisations sound the alarm that they are being forced to cut services for families due to insufficient funding, calls for help to one organisation have skyrocketed by more than 200 per cent.

Women's Health and Family Services chief executive Felicite Black said the state government’s “We’re All In This Together” pandemic slogan was not being followed through on, with Department of Communities contract negotiations requiring cutbacks from family and domestic violence frontline services while families experienced increased stresses in the COVID-19 climate.

Coronavirus lockdowns are making life more dangerous for women facing domestic violence.

Coronavirus lockdowns are making life more dangerous for women facing domestic violence.Credit: Sandy Scheltema

“It’s particularly galling at the moment, I think, for all of us,” Ms Black said, as six bosses of organisations working to help victims and perpetrators banded together to warn of a lack of funding was now at “crisis point”.

Ms Black said she started measuring the level of demand for support from her organisation in March, fearing an upsurge during the pandemic lockdown.

“I was quite concerned that demand could grow exponentially,” she said. “We identified quite early we were seeing a 200 to 300 per cent increase in referrals and inquiries.”

Women's Health and Family Services provides advocacy and counselling for families experiencing violence.

It is an early intervention model that helps educate women on their rights, how the law works, helps with safety planning and works with victims to help keep them and their children safe.

Mark McGowan's message about family and domestic violence.

Mark McGowan's message about family and domestic violence.Credit: Facebook

Ms Black said the sector was now in crisis and it was a matter of survival for the organisations involved.

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Six family and domestic violence counselling and advocacy support organisation bosses say there is a shocking lack of funding for the sector which stagnated years ago and has failed to keep up with increased costs and demand.

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Relationships Australia WA, Community Employers WA, Centrecare, Anglicare and the Pat Giles Centre joined Women's Health and Family Services in warning of cuts to services as a result of contract negotiations with the Department of Communities.

Men's behavioural change groups designed to help perpetrators of domestic violence to break the cycle will also be cut due to a lack of adequate funding, the chief executive of Relationships Australia WA warned.

Terri Reilly said the reality was that calls for help from distressed victims would go unanswered.

“The crisis point has been reached because over a number of years the department has failed to recognise that we can’t continue to deliver the service which essentially is the same funding bucket,” she said.

“We are in the surreal situation of negotiating with our departmental manager to see where we are going to cut programs.”

Her organisation would have to cut the men's perpetrator service, before cutting services to the victims.

“Forcing cuts now ignores the fact that the sector has for years juggled to try and do more with less by constantly restructuring services, cutting costs to the bone, and having staff who work well beyond their paid work, simply to keep services running," Ms Reilly said.

Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence Minister Simone McGurk said the advice she had received was no service providers had communicated to the Department of Communities that FDV programs were at risk of being lost.

"As the minister, I do not intervene in contractual matters. But I am concerned to hear that services are cutting back their supports for people experiencing family and domestic violence and remain committed to exploring reasonable solutions," she said.

The Department of Communities continued to work with all its funded services to ensure they were sustainable and met the needs of the people they served, Ms McGurk said.

Calls to the Department of Communities Women’s FDV Helpline have jumped from 568 in March 2019 to 916 in March 2020. The April figure went from 583 in 2019, to 774 in 2020.

Ms McGurk said her department had set up a dedicated COVID-19 family and domestic violence taskforce to work with police and community service providers to ensure services remained open during the pandemic.

"The taskforce is working closely with family and domestic violence peak organisations and services across the State to identify the resources and supports required to respond fully to the needs of victims and children," she said.

The department was in the process of distributing $3.1 million in new Commonwealth funding to WA family and domestic violence service providers.

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