New refuge to meet community need

On average, three women seek assistance from our domestic and family violence services every eight hours.

Domestic and family violence was cited as the leading reason for people seeking assistance from our Homelessness and Housing services in the past year.

This chilling statistic speaks to the growing demand for services like Our Lady of the Way – a newly refurbished refuge operated by the St Vincent de Paul Society in Western Sydney that aims to meet the community-wide need for assistance.

Our Lady of the Way was established to provide supported crisis accommodation for single women aged over 55 years. It is a unique service model and is one of the only services in NSW that is specifically targeted for older females who are experiencing homelessness and domestic family violence.

The new refuge features individual units along with communal spaces that allow women to gain safety and rebuild their lives in a supportive environment.

The Society assisted more than 2,200 people through our domestic and family violence services over the past year. This demand for assistance has grown considerably in recent times with the number people our services have assisted since the start of COVID increasing by 42% annually.

While our services endeavour to meet this need with existing resources, the latest Report on Government Services, released by the Productivity Commission in early 2024, highlights the challenges that exist. Findings show close to half of all people seeking accommodation from Specialist Homelessness Services were unable to access support in the past year.

The latest Personal Safety Survey, conducted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, highlighted the concerning scale of domestic and family violence present throughout the country.

Findings from the survey include one in five adults have experienced family and domestic violence since the age of 15.

For women, the rate is one in four.

The issue has been shown to have lasting impacts on young people with 2.2 million people reportedly witnessing partner violence against their mothers when they were children. The intergenerational transmission of violence that stems from witnessing such trauma can lead to adverse developmental outcomes for children, including an increased likelihood of victims becoming perpetrators of violence later in life.

It is for factors like this that the Society has invested in dedicated support for children residing at our domestic and family violence refuges to help them recover in a safe and child-friendly environment.

As part of our ambition to increase access to impactful services for the most disadvantaged and hard to reach communities, establishing services like Our Lady of the Way enables the Society to ensure more people across the state are able to achieve and sustain housing security.