DV service that helped Doreen abandoned due to lack of funding

The domestic violence centre which helped murder victim Doreen Langham in her final days has had to abandon a successful women’s support program after being unable to secure extra funding.

THE domestic violence centre which helped murder victim Doreen Langham in her final days has had to abandon a successful women’s support program after it could not secure extra funding.

Logan’s Centre for Women and Co – which receives hundreds of DV calls each month, was involved in a groundbreaking pilot program where social workers were embedded in Logan Central police station to support domestic and family violence complainants.

But despite being widely praised by police, the domestic and family violence co-responder program has been scrapped after pleas for continued funding from the State government were knocked back.

The news comes after a horror week for domestic violence with “a calamity of errors” by police revealed at Ms Langham’s inquest, while the horrific murder of Stanley Obi by his ex-partner Sarah Mudge, who both died after a house fire, also shocked the state.

A case worker from the Centre for Women offered support to Ms Langham just days before she was killed by her ex Gary Hely, arranging for the locks to be changed at her Browns Plains townhouse after she filed a domestic violence order in February last year.

The worker, Ines Ilijasevic, gave evidence at the inquest where she told of the budgetary pressures of trying to help women flee domestic violence situations.

The inquest also heard evidence from Acting Superintendent Ben Martain, second-in-command at the Queensland Police Service’s domestic and family violence and vulnerable person command, who spoke glowingly of the program. He told the inquest the initiative had achieved real results, encouraging women who may never have been comfortable speaking to officers to report their experiences to social workers based in the police station.

Acting Superintendent Martain wrote a letter of support for the centre’s CEO Stacey Ross, but it is understood the program was axed after just six months.

Late last year, the centre lobbied the justice department for more funding to continue the program, but was told future funding decisions would be made after the delivery of findings from the women’s safety and justice taskforce, due in June. Ms Ilijasevic had told the inquest about the financial strains for the centre offering support to vulnerable women. Asked by Paul Morreau, the barrister for Ms Langham’s family, whether staffing levels were “woefully inadequate”, Ms Ilijasevic replied: “100 per cent.”

In a statement, a State government spokeswoman said there had been no cut in funding to the centre.

“The program was funded internally by the service as a trial and it’s been so successful we’re currently reviewing it with a view to permanently funding the program,” she said.

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