Thursday, 26 May 2022

Women’s Centre for Health and Wellbeing Albury-Wodonga

Ms MAXWELL (Northern Victoria) (18:46): (1948) My adjournment is to the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, and the action I seek is for funding to be increased to the Women’s Centre for Health and Wellbeing in Albury-Wodonga to rectify the massive gap in funding versus service provision. The women’s centre helps Victorian women with support through domestic and family violence related counselling, sexual abuse and trauma counselling, crisis intervention support for apprehended violence orders or homelessness, and access to therapeutic groups.

The women’s centre is a cross-border service. New South Wales Health covers 89 per cent of their income, with 11 per cent from Victoria. The Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) in Victoria provides this organisation with $48 000 each year, which is purely to cater for 12 women who are first-time attendees each year for domestic violence related services. The reality for this service, though, is that 68 first-time domestic violence related women have attended their centre this year and 39 of those referrals have come from Victorian agencies. Predominantly referrals have come through the Orange Door, who referred 24 women, but others came from organisations such as the Centre Against Violence, the Victorian Aboriginal Child Care Agency, Upper Murray Family Care, Gateway Health or the department directly. Thirty-four per cent of the women’s centre’s clients—women or those who identify as women, over 16 years of age—are from Victoria.

This financial year the women’s centre has 89 Victorian clients, which equates to 509 appointments. The women’s centre tell me that the best way to translate details of the funding shortfall is that DFFH have valued the service at $4000 per client. With 89 Victorian clients this year, this should equate to $356 000 in funding, but they are only receiving $48 000. That is a shortfall of $302 255. The result is that the women’s centre cannot employ enough counselling staff to meet demand and this is putting the service under enormous pressure.

The service currently has a waitlist, which they say is for the first time ever, so clients have to wait three or four months to get the help they so desperately need. The women’s centre currently has one counsellor at four days per week offering counselling services, another counsellor at two days per week for counselling services and one counsellor at two days per week for therapeutic group work. An increase in funding would allow the service to have counsellors cover an additional nine days a week. This would be a game changer for victim-survivors in the region and ensure women can recover more quickly from the devastating trauma of domestic violence and sexual abuse.

I would be more than happy to organise a meeting for the minister or representatives from the department with the Women’s Centre for Health and Wellbeing Albury-Wodonga to tease out the issues in more detail. The government has made an enormous capital and operational investment in Orange Door services throughout Victoria. If people come through the Orange Door, there needs to be support at the service delivery end to meet their needs within an effective time frame.