‘False hope’: Women stuck in violent homes five years after royal commission

Five years after Victoria’s landmark Royal Commission into Family Violence, reports to police are at an all-time high, women are being hospitalised because of family violence at the same rates and 26,000 women and children are being turned away from housing services every year.

While experts say the $3 billion committed by the state government has made a big difference, and that the issues are complex and will take years to resolve, progress has been frustratingly slow in some areas.

Victoria’s historic Royal Commission into Family Violence set out to create root and branch reform at a cost of around $3 billion.Credit: Shutterstock

As well, the expiry in June of funding for the state’s Family Violence Reform Implementation Monitor, which holds the government to account, has been raised as a concern, as has the fact only seven of the forecast 17 Orange Door safety and service hubs are up and running.

There remain serious shortages of emergency and long-term housing for victims of family violence and the wait times for case managers who connect women with a variety of services are as much as eight weeks in some areas.

Leaders from within the sector say the system remains overwhelmed and women are in danger.

Jocelyn Bignold, chief executive of family violence support agency McAuley Community Services for Women, said the lack of medium to long-term shelter meant women were being given “false hope” by the message they would be supported if they left dangerous homes.

“Everyone knows [family violence] exists and it’s bad, we’ve spent billions of dollars on it, so women are wondering, ‘When I say I need help, why can’t I get it?’

“[The community] is saying to them the system is there and we’ve got crisis housing therefore you make the right choice in terms of getting out and if you stay it’s your fault,” said Ms Bignold.

“In actual fact, we are still not giving women a proper safety net to make an informed choice to leave.”

There is also criticism from sector leaders that children are not yet consistently treated as independent clients of the system to enable their safety, schooling and other needs to be considered.

When he announced the royal commission in 2015, Premier Daniel Andrews said family violence was “the most urgent law and order emergency occurring in our state and the most unspeakable crime unfolding across our nation”. Victoria has invested more money and resources in the sector than any other state.

Five years on, key observers say it is too soon to say what impact the commission’s 227 recommendations have had on women’s and children’s safety.

Statistically, little has changed. Family violence crime statistics released by Victoria Police in the run-up to the royal commission’s fifth anniversary, next Monday, showed incidents have increased to an all-time high, although this could be a result of greater awareness and willingness to report. In the year to December 31, 2020, incidents rose by 9.4 per cent from 84,543 to 92,521.

Police are called to family incidents every six minutes and an average of 253 incidents are attended each day.

So far, 167 of the recommendations intended to dramatically improve Victoria’s family violence prevention, response and perpetrator accountability are marked as implemented. But researchers and sector leaders say lack of systems to evaluate and analyse the impact makes it impossible to judge if the reforms are working.

“We don’t know what the individual impact of the royal commission is on the individual lives of women and children experiencing family violence,” said Kate Fitz-Gibbon, director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre.

“The fact we can’t easily answer the question ‘Are women safer?’ shows us how much more work there is to do. That’s not at all a failure of the government or the royal commission, it’s just the immensity of the problem we’re trying to tackle.”

Victorian women are still being hospitalised and arriving at emergency departments as a consequence of family violence at the same rate as they were before the commission, and family violence is still the leading cause of homelessness of women and children.

Women and children will go into refuge or a crisis hotel and are then very much at risk of returning to the violent situation.

Jenny Smith, Council for Homeless Persons

“We cannot have a state where women experiencing family violence are being driven into homelessness or remain with the perpetrator,” said Associate Professor Fitz-Gibbon, who is also on the board of the government’s new prevention agency, Respect Victoria.

Jenny Smith, chief executive of the Council To Homeless Persons, said while the government’s commitment to creating housing for women and children escaping violence “has been genuine and real, is vital and will make a difference” (including in its recently announced social housing Big Build), housing services were still turning away 26,000 women and children a year who need accommodation, most of them as a result of family violence.

“SafeSteps [Victoria’s 24/7 family violence response centre] accommodates an average of 60 women and 55 children in motels and other crisis accommodation every night,” said Ms Smith. “Without a destination, women and children will go into refuge or a crisis hotel and are then very much at risk of returning to the violent situation.”

Of 10 recommendations by the royal commission relating to accommodation, seven are still works in progress.

Gabrielle Williams, Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, says tensions between agencies had an impact on the Orange Door safety hubs.Credit: Getty

The Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, Gabrielle Williams, said five years into the government’s 10-year plan it was heartening to see the issue had been elevated to the mainstream, but “we are still very aware there is lots of work to do and still plenty of movement that needs to be made in various ways”.

“Seeing it linked to discussions around gender equality, which goes to cultural change, will be the heart of long-term success,” Ms Williams said. Increased family violence reporting rates showed “growing confidence in the system”.

Issues such as the difficult rollout of the Orange Door hubs, which was criticised as rushed and poorly implemented in a 2020 Auditor-General’s report, were to do with “sectors previously hostile to each other working side by side”.

“We always knew that was going to be tough getting specialist family violence, children and family services working together when they’ve always seen each other as competitors ... workers acknowledge that was a tension ... that will dissipate over time as the model settles in,” Ms Williams said.

“The royal commission gave us 227 recommendations, it didn’t give us a system. Our job is to turn that into a system; being halfway through the 10 years of standing up the reform, we come to that conscious our efforts need to be poured into making this a system.”

Eleri Butler, the new chief executive of Family Safety Victoria, said that since May 2018 more than 100,000 people including 40,000 children and young people, had sought help from the Orange Door network. Seven more Orange Door hubs will open this year and three next year.

Associate Professor Fitz-Gibbon said “we need to celebrate everything Victoria has achieved, really transformative reform”. This included:

• Breaking down of silos in which those responding to family violence operate.
• Greater information sharing due to legislative change to which “the government has shown phenomenal commitment”.
• The introduction of the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework.

However, she was one of many experts who said the pace of change was frustratingly slow. “We have had transformative systems change [and] the program of reform the government has implemented and overseen is world first and absolute best practice. They are having a genuine go at creating a whole-of-systems response to family violence and the impact of that in practice will take time.

“We have to say we are not satisfied ... if we want to see faster change we have to ensure we do not see women and children being turned away from housing services and people sitting on long wait lists for various programs. We need to up our efforts because the pandemic has upped the ante on family violence.”

The fact the implementation monitor was not ongoing was “extremely disappointing. It absolutely should be to ensure ongoing accountability and independent oversight of this critical reform agenda.”

Professor Kelsey Hegarty, joint chair in family violence prevention at the University of Melbourne, said it was of concern that training in risk assessment and information sharing via the Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management Framework had yet to be rolled out fully in Victorian hospitals, despite specific hospital funding for family violence being likely to lapse in June this year.

Tania Farha, chief executive of the family violence peak body Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria, said the state had 105 refuge beds before the royal commission and the eventual number after it will be 165. Some will be in modern, “core and cluster” models where women and children can also access support services.

Tania Farha, chief executive of the peak family violence body DVRCV has raised the alarm on lack of shelter for violence victim-survivors.Credit: Justin Mc Manus

There are 19 core and cluster refuges planned, two of them for Aboriginal communities. Ms Farha said nine would be up and running by early May. The rest are in stages of development.

The royal commission did not say how many more refuge beds were needed, but Ms Farha said “there is still not enough refuge capacity and there won’t be even when all the core and cluster ones come in”.

Successful implementation of measures to raise awareness of and engagement with the issue of family violence could be driving up reporting numbers. “More people are recognising their own experience ... and seeking support – this is a major achievement and it’s why we’ve seen this reporting increase. That’s a good thing.”

“The royal commission and subsequent reforms completely shifted the public conversation about family violence and awareness, that’s at an all-time high,” said Ms Farha.

Everyone knows it exists and it’s bad, we’ve spent billions of dollars ... so women are wondering ‘When I say I need help, why can’t I get it?’

Jocelyn Bignold, chief executive, McAuley Community Services for Women

She agreed with the Council to Homeless Persons’ Jenny Smith that the introduction of Family Violence Flexible Support Packages had been effective. These allow workers to support families with “whatever it takes to keep them safe” – whether that be extra security measures to keep them in their homes or help leaving. These had been evaluated and shown to be useful but more were needed.

Rita Butera, chief executive of the state’s 24/7 crisis response service Safe Steps, said her organisation was still receiving 250 calls for help a day and 45 to 55 web chats a week.

The service has experienced a 20 per cent increase in call volume in the past two years and is accommodating an average of 100 women and children a night. “Thirty per cent of [those women and children] go straight into the homelessness sector” after the crisis period, Ms Butera said.

“Motel accommodation is not necessarily safe. With regard to the [commission’s] recommendations, the redevelopment of refuges is a fantastic achievement and still happening ... but five years on there aren’t enough and there is no commitment for more.”

Marcia Neave, oversaw the 13-month Royal Commission into Family Violence which made 227 recommendations five years ago, 167 of which have been implemented.Credit: Eddie Jim

There was “a real need to have some timelines” around the delivery of promised accommodation for women and children escaping family violence.

“We have timelines against other commitments governments make. When they say they are going to do something in the world of infrastructure, they’ll achieve a goal in a certain time. Why not do that in this space as well?”

The speed with which alternatives to motel accommodation were coming on stream was “not satisfactory”, she said.

“[Clients] should be in a refuge. The risks are high [for women and children in motels] and the risks of them returning to perpetrators is really high,” said Ms Butera.

Ms Butera said she was pleased with the more integrated way services were working together and that information sharing between agencies had improved. But there was frustration on the front line about issues, including the lack of safe accommodation.

Long-term family violence research leader Professor Cathy Humphreys, co-chair of the Melbourne Research Alliance for the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Their Children, said reforms to improve support and response to family violence were performing more strongly than prevention efforts.

”One of the sweet spots people are talking about is information sharing: if you’ve got an offender you are really concerned about you send a report to the Central Information Point (CIP) and that gives you data from the police, child protection and courts,” Professor Humphreys said.

More work was also necessary, and research was being done, on how to keep more victim-survivors of family violence in their own homes with the perpetrator excluded, rather than women and children routinely being uprooted from their jobs, communities and schools.

“We are aware we could be doing better here. Lots of elements are in place, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts,” she said.

Wide-ranging reforms to police education and training, including placing specialist family violence trainers across the state, had shown good results, and cultural change in Victoria Police in the way family violence was approached had been strong.

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732)