South Australia’s domestic violence crisis line received a record number of calls on July 1 - the same day the Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence began its work.
The head of SA’s largest domestic and family violence services provider has told the commission’s first day of public hearings the system is in crisis because it doesn't have the resources to handle the significant increase in demand.
Opening the hearings on Wednesday, Commissioner Natasha Stott Despoja said she wanted to identify ways to make the systems better, “so that we can eliminate - reduce at least - the scourge that is domestic, family and sexual violence” and make findings that will change and save lives.
“We're hearing about … the importance of prevention, early intervention, the need for greater support for children and young people, the complexity of service delivery in remote and regional areas, right through to discussions about how we hold more accountable those people who perpetrate this violence, as well as providing more behavioural education for people who use violence,” she said.
The commission’s “listening phase” has involved hundreds of hours of meetings and has also received 300-plus submissions and 500-plus survey responses, held 80-plus listening sessions and visited five regional locations.
The first day of hearings is focused on the link between housing instability and domestic and family violence.
Women’s Safety Services SA chief executive Maria Hagias said a decade ago, there had been a focus on early intervention so women could avoid ending up in crisis.
"Unfortunately, now we're a system that screens out instead of screening in … our decisions are made on imminent risk,” she said.
There was now a lot more community awareness around domestic and sexual violence but when demand increased, funding did not.
“Eventually, those people that you might have been able to capture at that front end eventually end up in crisis and that puts more pressure on the system,” she said.
Tough choices had been made to redirect funding from early intervention and prevention into crisis.
“Now ... the majority of our work is imminent risk of domestic and family violence and homelessness,” Ms Hagias said.
“We had to pull back from initiatives around risk and safety reports, attending courts, group work; the demand just continued to increase … we needed to make decisions.”
Moving women and children into suitable accommodation had become very difficult because of housing supply, the cost and blockages in the system, she said.
They were ending up trapped in prohibitively expensive motel accommodation with no facilities to cook, while dealing with trauma.
The SA domestic violence hotline received a record number of calls on the day the commission started its work, and expected to receive 35,000 calls for 2024.
“We can only answer 70 per cent of those calls … this is an extreme challenge and it takes a lot of courage for people to call in," she said.
"When you can't pick up that phone to support that person at that time, there are extreme frustrations, not only from people who are trying to call in, but also external stakeholders because they can't get through,” she said.
“That puts significant stress also on our frontline staff … and when you can't reach every person that calls, it is extremely distressing.”
Of the 70 per cent of answered calls, another 55,000 calls are then made to support families.
“The demand is significant, and the system isn't coping, and it's at crisis point,” Ms Hagias said.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
Lifeline 13 11 14
13YARN 13 92 76
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
