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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-31 Daily Xml
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Domestic and Family Violence

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:41): My question is to the Minister for Human Services and is about domestic violence services. Before I ask my question, can I firstly thank the minister for hosting Our WATCh lunch forum today. Can the minister update the chamber about the diversity of domestic violence in South Australia?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:42): I thank the honourable member for her question. I thank the honourable members across the chamber and in the other place for their attendance at the Our WATCh event today. The Assistant Minister for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention and I have undertaken, through our domestic violence roundtables, to consult across South Australia. We have also been visiting a number of services and I would like to refer to some of them in response to the honourable member's question.

The office of the Women's Safety Services is located at Mile End. A number of members would be very familiar with it as it is also the location for the Zahra Foundation. Women's Safety Services South Australia is the organisation which runs a number of the cluster accommodations for women and families who are fleeing domestic violence.

On 12 July we were privileged to attend the Western DV Services with the CEO of that service as well as the CEO of Women's Safety Services South Australia to see some fairly recent and modern accommodation that is owned by the South Australian Housing Trust, and the services that are located there are provided through Women's Safety Services. We were also able to visit the relatively new service which is run by the St Vincent de Paul Society. It is a 20-room facility, staffed 24 hours a day and provides meals and similar services.

Families are also able to bring pets to the centre which is a very important initiative for a number of people. As honourable members may be aware pets are sometimes the reason why people don't flee domestic violence situations, because they are concerned about their pet's safety.

We also visited Yarrow Place, which is the sexual assault service. They expressed to us particularly that they were very supportive of the government announcement in relation to draft legislation, which has recently been announced, where strangulation is to be examined as a new form of assault under the legislation, and also Nunga Mi:Minar, which is the northern Aboriginal family violence service, which again is a particular cluster form of accommodation.

I would have to say that when we were at Nunga Mi:Minar, speaking to some of the board members there, they were very excited about the developments under the new Liberal government, where we have a new housing authority. I think they have already had contact with either the chair or the new CEO. They are aware that it is our intention to develop an Aboriginal housing strategy. Under the previous government, housing was mainstreamed. They are very keen to work with the new authority in terms of our strategy going forward.

The assistant minister and I also visited Catherine House, which a number of members would be familiar with, which is a service located within the metropolitan area for single women who are escaping domestic violence situations. It was really brought home to us at that particular visit about the trauma that a lot of people go through when they are fleeing these situations. It can take several months for people to work through that traumatic experience, and Catherine House provides a very invaluable service in terms of helping people to recover their independence and get onto a pathway where they can get on with rebuilding their lives.

I do thank all those service providers—I know that they have been very generous in the time that they provided—and participants, for want of a better word, who were there who shared their stories with us, which can trigger emotions for them that can be difficult to manage, but a very important part of our role is to understand the direct experiences of people. So I commend those services and thank them for the work that they do.

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