Jasmine* arrived in Australia two years ago expecting to marry the partner who brought her here. After six weeks, “things changed drastically”.
“He started to abuse me, abuse my children,” she says.
On a temporary visa with no family in the country or money of her own, she was unable to work so she stayed at home. When her partner kicked her and her two young sons out, in an instant they faced the threat of homelessness.
“I was feeling like, if I didn’t have kids, I am dead. Officially dead.”
Jasmine’s experience is not unusual.
One year ago the Adira Centre in New South Wales opened its doors, pitching itself as the state’s first multicultural centre for domestic and family violence. It was backed by $4.4m in funding for three years in a Minns Labor government election promise.
For years Settlement Services International had advocated to address a support gap for migrant and refugee women and children experiencing domestic violence.
“Migrants and refugee women and children have a lot of structural barriers to access,” Gulnara Abbasova, the director of the centre, says. “[And] there are a lot of cultural considerations.”
Language, traumatic migration journeys, previous exposure to violence and community dynamics all impact how they seek help, Abbasova explains, “if they do at all”.
Sabrina* did not know that controlling behaviours and emotional abuse are forms of domestic violence. And when she did leave her former partner, language was a barrier to finding help and her family challenged her decision.
She is now part of the centre’s lived experience advisory group. Her work includes “explaining how and what we went through”, so the centre can improve processes for different women from different backgrounds.
In its first year, the centre has directly supported about 450 women and children across 20 different languages. Its information sessions on domestic and family violence have reached about 1,000 people.
Abbasova says understanding cultural barriers is really important. And structural barriers can hinder a migrant’s ability to access crucial services.
Between police, courts, the health system and child protection services, “navigating our complex systems is a maze for any woman”, Abbasova says. Then factor in being new to Australia, with no supports, no family relations, and limited language to converse. “It is hard.”
About 40% of women the centre has supported are on temporary visas.
“Issues around Medicare, Centrelink, crisis accommodation is huge,” Abbasova says. A lack of avenues for help can make it harder for a woman to leave an abusive partner or for support centres to direct her towards assistance.
“If you are faced with a decision of leaving the perpetrator and becoming homeless, it is a really tough call to make,” Abbasova says.
‘Biggest struggle of my life’
Jasmine felt she had no options.
“I can’t do anything. No one is hearing me out,” she recalls. “I said to many [different local services] that I’m going to be homeless.” She feared no one would help.
“I couldn’t get a job. So I started cleaning: any shifts that might be able to cover me and the kids, their needs. It was the biggest struggle of my life.”
She reached out to help services online, including SSI who connected her to the Adira Centre. Jasmine was helped with organising food vouchers, training for employment and tuition for her children. An Adira support worker accompanied her to the police station, and connected her with a Legal Aid solicitor to assist with her visa.
“I started to have this chance to work, to do more jobs, to figure out what to do,” Jasmine says.
“They helped me sort out, if not money, how to figure out what to do … and how to deal with and explore life here, because I didn’t know.”
The centre “brought me back to life”, she says.
Abbasova says much of the centre’s resources goes into “really intense advocacy for clients”.
“It’s not just one phone call and referral to crisis accommodation,” she says. Sometimes it can take 15 to 20 phone calls to various services, “and it’s a no at every turn because of the limitations around visa status in particular”.
The centre handles casework in the western Sydney region. It also collaborates with domestic and family violence services by sending practitioners with related cultural and migration expertise. Not only does that provide positive outcomes for the women, Abbasova says, but it also “builds the capacity of that service that we work with”, improving cultural awareness and helping make the issue everyone’s responsibility.
The NSW minister for the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault, Jodie Harrison, says the government knows the importance of culturally appropriate responses for multicultural communities.
“Women from migrant and refugee backgrounds are less likely to report violence or seek help due to language barriers, cultural stigma, concerns about visa and residency status, financial insecurity and other cultural reasons.”
Abbasova says other states also have specialist response services for migrant women, including the SSI in Queensland and InTouch in Victoria.
*Jasmine and Sabrina are pseudonyms
• In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women’s Aid. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org
