2011 News

Release of Women's Refuge Statistics for the year 2010 to 2011

3 November, 2011

 Women’s Refuge shows a 12% increase

Women’s Refuge has announced an 11.6% increase in the number of women and children using their safe house accommodation in the year ending June 2011, in statistics released today.

“Every night of our last financial year an average of 230 women and children stayed in one of our 45 refuge safe houses,” says Women’s Refuge Chief Executive Heather Henare. “This is nearly 12% up on last year. The women and children also needed to stay longer. The average stay for a woman was 23 days which was a three day increase from the year before.”

Ms Henare said New Zealand had a hard year from July 2010 until June this year. “There have been significant crisis in our country and the recession seems never ending. The increase in our figures may reflect this, but it may also reflect how domestic violence is still a big problem in this country. Obviously more women feel able to contact us and seek help.”

Of the 25,000 women and children who used refuge services last year, nearly 30% of women got in touch with Refuge directly or via a crisis call. Police referred nearly half of the women refuge deals with. “Our increase in demand has come with no increase in baseline funding to cope with this,” says Ms Henare.

“With significant changes in social welfare, housing and employment policies being made by successive governments or proposed in the election lead up, it is our workers who will translate the impact of these changes to some of New Zealand’s neediest families.

“Of the 25,000 women and children we dealt with last year, we provided 28,000 services. These services included community support, advocacy around legal processes, money, housing and providing educational programmes. All these things are important to help these families deal with the impact of violence in their lives.”

Ms Henare says refuge workers are noticing that women are calling for help earlier and there is a noticeable increase in men seeking help to change their ways. “I congratulate various awareness campaigns such as It’s Not OK and the upcoming White Ribbon Day which may also have contributed to women seeking help earlier and men to think about changing their behaviours.”

“We sincerely hope that New Zealand may be turning a corner in speaking out about domestic violence, and in the number of men who seek help before their behaviour causes too much damage,” she says

Other statistics released by Women’s Refuge today are

• Note – These figures are for the 1 July 1 2010 – 30 June 2011 year and excludes statistics from the time of the Rugby World Cup. Although Women’s Refuge is carrying out some research on the Rugby World Cup, it will take some time before the results are available.

• Nearly 25,000 women and children used refuge services last year (24,951 – 13,937 women and 11,014 children)

• 1,073 women work at 45 refuges throughout New Zealand, with 656 of them being unpaid volunteers.

• There were 60,000 calls to refuge crisis lines, which equates to one call every nine minutes

• The average length of time a woman stayed at a safe house was 22.9 days which was an increase of three days compared to the year before (20.4 days). The average length of time children stayed at a safe house was 27.5 days (23.7 the previous year)

• Refuge workers provided 28,000 (27,784 to be exact) services to the women and children who needed help for domestic violence. These sorts of services include providing educational programmes, support, advocacy in the court and for housing, money and legal help.

• 40% of the children who end up in a refuge safe house or who use our services are under five years of age

• You may want to talk to your local refuge about their statistics and any trends. You can find all our affiliated refuges from www.womensrefuge.org.nz

Women’s Refuge is holding its Annual General Meeting Thursday Nov 3 – Sat Nov 5th. The venue is Tuturu Pumau Marae, 140-148 Maxwells Line, Palmerston North. Friday Nov 4th is open to the public and speakers include Minister of Justice Hon Simon Power (9.30am) and Principal Family Court, Judge Boshier (10.30am). As this is our 30th AGM we are honouring 13 women with 30 years experience working in the field of domestic violence. We can make these ladies available for interview if you are interested.

Media contact: Sue Lytollis, 027 322 4688 (021 900 681 as a back up)