Te Whare Hou Invercargill Women's Refuge Fund Underway
Women’s Refuge vision is to work towards the prevention and elimination of family violence and abuse. A simple belief that all women and children have the right to live violence free.
The team in Invercargill are working tirelessly across Invercargill and the Southland District to support women and children who are in urgent need of their services. Whether it be help with accessing healthcare and counselling, budgeting advice, legal assistance, housing or meeting basic needs like food and clothing, Women’s Refuge embrace all women and children facing crisis through domestic violence and abuse.
What NZ Refuge Risk Data tells us about family violence in client’s lives:
55% believe their perpetrators could kill them
57% experience more severe violence from their perpetrators when they tried to seek safety
44% of those with protection orders in place say this has already been breached
Invercargill Women’s Refuge 2024 supported:
Provision of 1702 bed nights
responded to 480 crisis line calls
72 women through their Adult Safety Programme
275 residential or community services
Establishing this endowment fund is a way to support and extend the services provided in Southland and Invercargill by this hardworking team
A Families Story
A text from our daughter, “I need help” followed by “he’s threatening to come here and kill me – or himself” is one of the most chilling things parents can receive from a strong independent daughter.
There began an unravelling of what had been a positive time in our daughter’s life, settling into a new job after university, away from home. The girl who arrived back home was a shell of herself. She couldn’t sleep alone due to the nightmares. She needed support to get her health and well-being back. It was heartbreaking to witness, and horrific to hear the stories of what she had been through as she started to unpack what had gone so wrong.
Our first call – Women’s Refuge. What on earth do we do? Thanks to their unwavering support, counsel and learning opportunities, the girl who left home months later to go back to her job was once again strong and armed with the necessary tools and knowledge on how to protect herself and begin to flourish.
Although we have a strong network of local family support, our family will forever be grateful to the work these incredible women at Women’s Refuge do. No matter what time of day or night, in any crisis, and during the aftermath, they are there. Domestic abuse can happen to anyone. Women’s Refuge attends to incidents of family violence across all parts of our Southland community. The scourge of domestic violence in our communities is eye opening, and heartbreaking.
