00:02Quite often there's only, you know, one or two domestic and family violence specialist
00:08services in those areas, so the options for victim survivors are very, very limited.
00:14And quite often in regional areas, people know each other.
00:19And so safety can be extremely compromised due to the fact that people have such intimate
00:25knowledge of, you know, their neighbours and other community members.
00:30Additionally, community members can be seen as leaders of the community, so reporting
00:36incidences of domestic and family violence is also incredibly complex, in addition to
00:41the isolation that victim survivors will quite often experience.
00:46What we know is that the cost of delivering specialist services in the regions far outweighs
00:55what it actually costs in metropolitan areas.
00:58In some instances up to nine times the operational cost of running these services.
01:04So we know and we've been advocating for the fact that regional, rural and remote services
01:12do need that additional loading to cater for the very, very specialist localised needs of
01:22their areas.
01:23Recruitment is actually really difficult also in rural, regional and remote areas based
01:28on transient matters with local communities, based on the, you know, low population rates.
01:38There's, you know, an attraction to this work sometimes is quite difficult.
01:44Also the costs of the basics around service delivery.
01:51So working in domestic and family violence services will include at times a lot of travel, but that
01:58is not necessarily factored into the funding envelopes for these services.
02:04In some areas, you know, we've spoken to members that in some areas, some workers may need to
02:11stay, because they're travelling such large distances, they may need to stay in another area for the night.
02:18Again, those, those, the costs of accommodation are not covered in those funding envelopes.
02:25And this work is very, very specialised.
02:27And place-based solutions and place-based service delivery is really, really critical in, in
02:34these areas and it will often look quite different.
02:37And again, the funding envelopes don't actually really cater for those specialised responses.
02:45A lot of women have nowhere else to go.
02:49So what we are finding is that women will quite often return to violence because there is legitimately
02:59very few options.
03:00So the options quite often are homelessness or being in, in, or returning to, to the violence.
03:08And it's really important to, to note that, you know, escaping domestic violence is a really complex web.
03:17It's a really complex web of services.
03:20And for victim survivors, they're navigating many services and many structures all at the same time.
03:27Um, and so what we need to acknowledge is that this is a whole of government and a whole of
03:33community approach.
03:34Um, and so that there is never one solution just in, in one pocket of the service, um, the
03:41system structure.
03:42Um, there are, there are many sort of intersecting, uh, realities for, for women, um, and children
03:49that are, are escaping or experiencing domestic and family violence.
03:52And it's really important that we have a, a system that actually meets victim survivors
03:57where they're at on that trajectory.
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