Every single day across NSW, victim-survivors of domestic and family violence are in crisis
It’s a crisis that’s not necessarily visible to the greater public. Unlike an ambulance screaming to a car accident, it’s an emergency response that’s usually shielded from sight, because a lights and sirens response can put victim-survivors at risk of further danger.
The hidden nature of this emergency response is vital for a woman’s safety, but without the public show of intervention, it means we forget that the specialist domestic and family violence workforce is an essential service.
Frontline workers in refuges, helplines, outreach programs, and advocacy services show up for people at their most vulnerable. They answer calls in the middle of the night. They find a safe bed for a mother and her children with nowhere else to go. They attend court to stand beside someone who is scared to face their abuser alone. They provide safety planning, counselling, and the reassurance that someone is listening and willing to help.
Just like a nurse in the Emergency Department, if specialist DFV workers are forced to say “Sorry, we’re full” – it can be the difference between life or death.
Yet while we treat hospitals as essential, domestic and family violence services are too often treated as optional.
Instead of stable, ongoing funding, they’re expected to compete for grants and piecemeal resources – while those lucky enough to have longer term funding, are stretching budgets that haven’t shifted beyond a CPI increase in a decade.
The reality is many services are operating year-to-year, never knowing if funding will continue, all while managing ever-growing demand and complexity.
For this, the dedication of the specialist domestic and family violence workforce is extraordinary.
They continue to show up, even when it means unpaid hours, personal sacrifice, and carrying the emotional exhaustion of some of the most high-risk crisis work.
But dedication should never be mistaken for limitless capacity.
Without the right investment, services are forced to make impossible choices: who they can help today, and who that means they’ll likely need to turn away tomorrow.
This is the reality that the public rarely sees.
To be frank, the only reason DFV services are still operating is because of the extraordinary, and unsustainable, efforts of staff. Workers are putting in unpaid overtime, fundraising on their own time, buying food vouchers out of their own pockets, and relying on community goodwill just to keep the doors open.
This is not a funding model. It’s a workforce on the edge of collapse.
As one of our members recently told us –
“We are constantly being asked to deliver more with less, and it sends the message that the lives and safety of victim-survivors are not a true priority.”
Emergency rooms save lives. So do domestic and family violence services – they also reduce long-term costs to our health, justice, and welfare systems. It’s well past time for government to commit to a 50% increase to their core funding – it’s about a decade overdue really.
The question we need the government to answer is, ‘do you consider saving lives essential work?’ Because at the end of the day – that’s what the specialist DFV sector does.
Hospitals don’t run on goodwill, and neither can DFV services. Without proper funding, we risk losing the very workforce that saves lives every day.
