Tuesday, 18 June 2024

Family violence services

Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (21:58): (956) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence. My ask is that she clarifies the budget allocations for specialist family violence services and commits to additional funding so these services can meet demand. Following the budget the government has been speaking about its continued investment in the prevention of family violence, but on the ground, the reality for specialist family violence services remains unchanged. Demand continues to outstrip supply. Staff are on precarious short-term contracts. Frontline workers are burnt out. Every day family violence services have to turn away victim-survivors because they simply do not have the capacity to help. InTouch Multicultural Centre against Family Violence is one of these services. They support migrant and refugee women with safety, housing, financial security and wellbeing. For many of inTouch’s clients English is not their first language and they require services in language along with wraparound support for complex needs. Women on temporary visas who experience family violence face compounding vulnerabilities due to the uncertainty of their visa status and limited social connections. Mainstream services are excellent, but they simply do not have the cultural capabilities to deliver services safely and effectively to this cohort of women. There is a dire need to properly fund multicultural family violence services, including specialist family violence refuges for culturally specific populations. InTouch is exploring and growing some services through corporate partnerships and philanthropy. They are also working towards establishing a new social enterprise. Other specialist family violence services have taken similar approaches to stretch limited government funding. Despite these efforts, inTouch and similar services are overstretched and overburdened. They struggle to plan for the future because government funding structures are random and short term. This leaves clients in precarious positions and makes recruitment and retention even more difficult.

InTouch needs at least another $6 million per year over the next four years to ensure appropriate and adequate support for migrant and refugee women experiencing family violence. This funding would go towards complex family violence casework as well as prevention and early intervention programs focused on working directly with multicultural communities. It would fund legal and migration services that are essential to recovering from family violence, and it would fund the sector-leading, essential inSpire program, which helps women and children with recovery and healing so they can rebuild their lives after experiencing family violence. Without these services, culturally diverse women and children are at risk of family violence and being left to fend for themselves.

In this year’s ‘Gender Equality Budget Statement’ the government claimed that an additional $269 million is being invested in preventing family violence; meanwhile, the Treasurer’s speech reports this number to be $211 million. We have heard from several family violence services that actually there is no new funding and only a continuity of existing funding. I am concerned that the government is hiding behind rhetoric and words while in effect very little is being done to improve operating conditions for specialist family violence services. Minister, my ask is that you clarify the budget allocations for specialist family violence services by specifying how much money has been allocated in this year’s budget for each specialist family violence service in Victoria and that you sustainably fund these services without delay.