Supporting domestic violence victims: Part 1
You want to help. You need to help Here’s how.
Be supportive without making it about your discomfort. (I’m comfortable sharing my journey in my Forty South pieces as I believe that the public needs to hear the truth of people’s experiences. Abuse thrives in silence.)
Challenge minimising language when you hear it, such as “just leave”, “why did she stay?” “it takes two”, “he seems nice”.
Arm yourself with knowledge. Understand that domestic violence is more than an incident. Coercive control and ongoing terror are not just one incident but a pattern of behaviour spanning many incidents.
If you suspect someone is living with domestic violence, check in privately and consistently.
Offer practical help such as offering support to take a victim to a domestic violence service or police station should they indicate they’re comfortable with pursuing outside support. Brochures and other printed or digital information passed to a victim is helpful; it may be the first step they need to remove themselves from abuse.
What Tasmanian services can do to help:
I have a strong connection to community/support services through my advocacy role and as a victim, depending in the past on services for essential support for myself and three children. To help someone properly, do some research on the available services in Tasmania. It is valuable and powerful knowledge.
Thinking about the support I received, what stands out was the lengths service staff, though stretched to the limit of support they could offer, went to find a refuge for myself and children, crisis housing and support in priority domestic violence counselling for the four of us. The right support put in place meant the eradication of our immediate and most pressing problems.
Such support was literally the difference between homelessness and having a temporary roof over our heads. Even though we knew crisis housing at the refuge was temporary, the staff there helped us to adjust to a new life without abuse. Services available at that time took away the fear and uncertainty of possible homelessness. I could then concentrate on other pressing needs: Centrelink payments, police to obtain protection orders, counselling for myself and separately for the children, finding work, preparing court documents.
Support gave us a way to navigate the trauma and daily distress we experienced given our dire circumstances and the ongoing abuse from my abuser and his family after we’d left.
We couldn’t return to the abuser no matter the difficulties encountered after leaving, so if services and the police hadn’t stepped in we would have been on the streets or crammed into my mother’s one bedroom unit which wasn’t viable or realistic as a solution.
Sadly, people often misunderstand what support looks like after leaving. Firstly, the abuse stops. Secondly, support services are available.
However, it is shocking to know that Tasmanian services often have a waiting list well over 12 months long, and that services are at breaking point and find it difficult to manage even priority and in-crisis clients. Over the past decade I’ve noticed changes in service wait times grow, staff numbers decline, and support availability erode. Waiting lists have ballooned and, according to data, Tasmania has the longest waiting lists – up to two years for children’s services.
When support is delayed or inconsistent, it reinforces the unknown element victims are already feeling when they leave an abuser, the uncertainty regarding where they are headed, that they can’t depend on the surety of support when they most need it and are most vulnerable.
It adds to confusion and lack of control, something they felt acutely when living with the abuser.
It’s important to seek support early. It may not lead to immediate access to services, but it does sow the seeds of autonomy, of gaining a semblance of control while being abused, a sense that you are not as powerless as the abuser would have you believe.
Having adequate community services helps more than just the individual. Services provide employment in the community and individual volunteering increases a sense of contributing to the local community. Beyond the individual, services save government finances in the long run because they create people who are less reliant on government, judicial and health systems, and government benefits.
This is an investment in self-reliance and independence.
