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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-10-16 Daily Xml
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DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:29): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for the Status of Women a question on the topic of safe-at-home models to address domestic and family violence.

Leave granted.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS: As the minister is keenly aware—and I certainly commend her for her previous advocacy on this issue—escaping violence is the most common reason given by people seeking assistance from specialist homelessness services. When women are supported to remain in their homes and communities they are better able to maintain their social support networks, their employment, their educational opportunities and, of course, if they are parenting, the stability and care of their children. All these things support them on the road to recovery.

In that context I draw the minister's attention—and, indeed, the attention of this council—to the Be Safe program, recently trialled for nearly three years in regional Victoria and a recipient of the 2010 National Crime and Violence Prevention Award. Based on a successful Swedish model of personal safety for victims of family violence, it uses a personal alarm system to alert police. Be Safe offers an intervention to prevent further violence, enabling women and children not only to remain in their own home but also to live a full life in their community.

Be Safe has actually changed lives and very likely saved lives. Collated data from women, workers and police has evaluated the success of a three-year trial of this program in regional Victoria, with a reduction in physical assaults and a decrease in intervention order breaches. Be Safe has provided an added level of support and security that enabled 68 per cent of the women in the pilot project to remain in their home, significantly reducing, if not eliminating, their risk of homelessness.

The financial analysis of that project included the costs of re-establishing a woman and her children escaping family violence, and included costs associated with crisis accommodation, transitional housing and accessing long-term housing in the form of private rental, which has also been illuminating. In that analysis, this cost was estimated at being between $10,000 to $15,000—a very narrow figure that did not take into account the financial burden women incurred in terms of lost income or productivity, or indeed health burdens.

By contrast, the costs associated with the Be Safe program have been estimated at $3,755.12 a year, with the component of that being the specific unit of only $1,020 for the first year with $600 being allocated for subsequent years. That is a reduction of one-third to one-fifth of costs expended by the state.

Predicated on this, my question to the minister is: is the government currently considering any safe-at-home models, including the Be Safe option, to ensure that it is truly viable for women and children at high risk of severe and ongoing violence to be safe in their home, in their community and in their workplace?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the Status of Women) (15:32): I thank the honourable member for her important question and for her ongoing interest and passion in this particular policy area. There are a number of strategies that are put in place here in South Australia to assist in protecting victims of domestic violence, as well as helping to prevent people from becoming victims of domestic violence. The particular initiative outlined by the honourable member is not one I am familiar with, but I am familiar with similar types of systems and I am happy to have a closer look at the particular program the honourable member has mentioned here today.

We do have a system of providing duress alarms to some victims of domestic violence to help improve their safety. There is a range of matters that are considered though, and only some people are considered to be eligible for that type of protection. It is not an ideal situation for a person to have to rely on a duress alarm to obtain assistance. The main objective is to reduce the risk of violence in that person's life so that they can live a safe and happy life with their children.

In relation to that, intervention orders have obviously been a very important piece of legislation in assisting to make women safer in their home; so too has our Family Safety Framework, a system aimed at focusing services for those women, in particular, who are assessed as being at high risk of domestic violence.

It is interesting that, although these figures have not been verified yet, so they are very preliminary at this point in time, certainly the anecdotal evidence that I am getting back is that the number of intervention orders compared to the old-fashioned restraining orders has increased significantly, so more people are accessing them. Also, the very preliminary figures—again, these have not been formalised yet—show the number of breaches of the intervention orders has, it appears, significantly decreased compared to the number of breaches of restraining orders.

More women in particular are using them as a form of protection, and it appears that the number of times they are being breached (at this very early stage, I would have to stress) has reduced significantly. That is providing significantly improved protection for women and children in their homes.

That is what intervention orders are focused on: they are to try to reduce the reliance on having to remove women and often their children from the family home when there is a domestic violence incident and then to having to hide them away in a safe house somewhere, dislocating them from their relationships at a time when they need that sort of support the most.

Often, children had to be removed from their schools and placed in different schools. As if their lives were not traumatised enough, that level of dislocation significantly increased the level of trauma. Intervention orders turned that around significantly. They offer protection to women in their homes by removing the perpetrator from the family home.

Of course, there are now funding packages available to assist women and the family to secure the family home, to make them safer; things like changing the locks, improving the lighting, and removing shrubbery that might hide a stalker. There is a whole range of things that those funds can be used for to assist in protecting and ensuring improved safety for women and children in their family home. As I said, I thank the honourable member for drawing my attention to this program, and I would be very interested and pleased to have closer look at it.

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