Report on site visit to Mary’s Place
Observations of the operations of the service
Outreach and support services for women and
children experiencing Domestic Violence
Holly Catt
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Purpose of the service:
Mary’s Place provides an outreach, support and transitional accommodation service
for single women and women with children escaping domestic violence, but also
those who remain in the home. This is significant as it recognises that supporting
women while they still remain in the home is most often the first step in successfully
escaping domestic violence. This framework supports the new model being piloted
by Family and Community Services called Staying Home Leaving Violence, which
seeks to keep women and their children in the home but away from the perpetrator, it
prevents women and children experiencing homelessness. It may be the way many
domestic violence services begin to model their services, however this may depend
on the success of the pilot. Overall, Mary’s Place provides specialist support services
for example, Counselling, advocacy, child therapy, and crisis support.
Methods of delivery of service:
Accommodation facilities / building:
Mary’s Place organises its services into two distinctive forms, through its office
building located just outside of the CBD of Bankstown and through providing medium
term supported housing throughout Bankstown / Canterbury area. The office
building, on first glance from the street, is stark looking and resembles more of an
ordinary office building, this is necessary however, due to the inherent risks of
providing domestic violence support services. The office cannot be identified from
the street and has high security to protect staff from possible drop in from
perpetrators. They compensate for this unfriendly entrance well, inside clients are
surrounded by bright and warm colours, paintings, comfortable furniture and space
to sit quietly.
The medium term accommodation they provide to women and children escaping
domestic violence are situated throughout the Bankstown and Canterbury areas
among residential housing and can be provided to women and their children on six
month leases until necessary or until circumstances change. This accommodation is
provided in collaboration with Housing NSW where houses are supplied to Mary’s
Place and managed by Housing NSW. This means Mary’s Place has the benefit of
access to accommodation for clients without the associated costs and administrative
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time. The family can feel much more at home living in this form of supported
accommodation; it gives them privacy, their own space to heel in and a sense of
ownership over the surroundings as it is their own house, if only temporary.
Alternatively, many clients would escape to refuges, which as institutions can impact
on women and children settling and feeling safe as they are entering a common
space and an institution that is governed by rules. Refuges are also crisis
accommodation and do not provide a stable environment for women and particularly
their children. What is also interesting to note here is that the medium term (6-12
months) is given with enough time to seek support and begin to move forward, but
also forces them to work towards moving forward independently with their children
and seeking private accommodation, reducing the risk of families becoming
institutionalised by the system.
Staffing arrangements
Mary’s Place employs seven staff in total, on both part time and full time basis. All
staff provide specialist services and each have formal qualifications in their area
which includes, counselling, childcare, child therapy, intake and assessment. Extra
care is taken by management in selecting staff with the right characteristics for
working with vulnerable women and children. It was interesting to note that for this
reason they do not engage volunteers to assist with programs as it would not be cost
effective would be labour intensive, they would require intensive specialist training
and volunteers typically have a high turnover. All staff are women, which is
appropriate for the all women client basis, and the nature of domestic violence.
Services like this, including refuges will typically have an all women staff base; this
can serve to reduce the power imbalance between staff and clients.
Relationship between staff and recipient:
As mentioned, in order to prevent a power in balance between staff and the client
special attention is paid towards the intake process to give more ownership over the
process to the client. This is important as all human services require an intake
process of some kind which can inevitably strip the client of control, dignity, and
privacy. Mary’s Place employs a well qualified intake officer who uses a case plan
method designed in collaboration with the client and goals are set by the client, it
gives the client ownership of the process and what the outcome will be. It is essential
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for Mary’s Place to monitor the power balance between staff and clients as these
clients are essentially vulnerable in the first place to the abuse of power through
living with domestic violence and need to regain that control and dignity back in their
life.
Relationship with other services:
The case plan method adopted by Mary’s Place gives the client more control over
what services they will need to help support them through the process of escaping
domestic violence. In working in collaboration with other local government and non
government services, including the police, the staff can reduce the problem of a lack
of communication between services commonly seen, which impacts on the client and
is not effective. The staff at Mary’s Place also prioritise mending fractured
relationships clients may have with other services like the police, when the clients
first interaction may not have been positive. For example, for the police where
process and law can cloud their judgement and sensitivity, at times women can be
treated more like criminals than vulnerable victims of violence. Mary’s Place works
closely with the domestic violence liaison officer to help train police in domestic
violence and walking women through the process of obtaining an Apprehended
Violence Order (AVO). The staff provide a vital role in working with other services as
they have a well developed understanding of domestic violence and how to analyse
individual situations and formulate the best possible response. This is a critical
distinction between Mary’s Place and other forms of care which may provide a more
constricted response of a one size fits all method rather than taking into account the
circumstances and needs of an individual.
Funding:
Primary
The first stream of funding Mary’s Place receives is their core, recurrent funding
received from Family and Community Services (DOCS), under the Specialist
Homelessness Services program, formally the Supported Accommodation
Assistance Program (SAAP). Under this program Domestic Violence is recognised
as a significant factor leading to women and children becoming homeless. This is
significant as domestic violence, particularly some forms including financial abuse,
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emotional abuse, and essentially most non physical forms are still not recognised in
society, particularly in certain high socio economic areas. With more campaigns like
White Ribbon Day educating the community more debate around tackling this issue
can be achieved and ideally more development in policy; essentially more funding of
this kind.
Secondary
The secondary form of funding received which is non recurrent, is received through
grants programs for example, Bankstown Council’s annual Community Grants
Program and Clubs Grants, formally known as Community Development Support
Expenditure (CDSE). Grants like these are available to community groups or not-for
profit, incorporated organisations to apply to support new initiatives. This form of
grant is non recurrent funding and is seen as a way of supporting new short term
initiatives or events, for example; Mary’s Place applies for funds to supplement new
support groups they set up each year and information sessions. Clubs grants is an
interesting program where clubs receive a tax deduction of up to 1.5% on revenue
from poker machines they allocate to community projects, it’s falls under the idea of
Corporate Citizenship; the for-profit sector giving back to the community.
I would like to acknowledge the staff at Mary’s Place for its time in allowing me to
visit their organisation, and for the significant work they do in the community for
women and children who experience domestic Violence.
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