Women's Safety

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:45): My question is to the Minister for Human Services regarding women's safety. Can the minister please provide an update to the council on how the Marshall Liberal government is improving regional responses to domestic and family violence?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:45): I thank the honourable member for her question and for the opportunity to talk about some of our specifically regional-based services that are assisting women and children more at the community level before matters have escalated to achieve some support when they need it.

Last Friday, it was my great pleasure to open our fifth domestic and family violence hub in the community in Mount Barker. I was joined there by Assistant Minister for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention, Carolyn Power, the local state member, Dan Cregan, the local federal member, Rebekha Sharkie, and Her Worship Mayor Ann Ferguson.

This particular service opened on 16 March. It is another one that we are calling The Haven and it is located at the community centre, which is an independent community-based community centre very well located to things like the local TAFE, the Mount Barker community centre and other services at Auchendarroch House.

It provides a supportive space for women who are at risk of or are experiencing domestic and family violence. It is centrally located with accessibility to public transport and offers a range of universal and targeted services that will provide a sense of privacy to women, in addition to accessible pathways to other co-located services, such as financial counselling, emergency relief, training and social inclusion programs.

This particular centre is run by dedicated board members, staff and volunteers, who are extremely positive about having The Haven come on board. It is a co-located site with the Women's Information Service, which recruited some 16 volunteers for the service and has done some extensive training with those volunteers to assist them with counselling, identification of issues and the like.

We know from our experience with other havens that particularly for the volunteers, for whom we are extremely grateful for their support for these programs, and through a lot of other volunteering programs, that there's always a benefit for those people who volunteer. It gives them that sense of wellbeing and giving back to their community. We also know that some of our volunteers have gained confidence in those roles to go on and gain employment.

So it has been a fantastic initiative, the fifth of these that we have opened up in a regional area and we look forward to rolling more of these particular services out to our regions so that people can get that assistance as they need.