A ground-breaking new study in Newcastle could provide the blueprint for early domestic violence intervention across the country as violence rates continue to rise.
Jenny's Place and the University of Newcastle joint-funded the study: Improving domestic violence services in the Hunter: An evaluation of early intervention services offered by Jenny's Place, which reviewed the the Newcastle Domestic Violence Resource Centre run by Jenny's Place.
The resource centre was created with no qualifying criteria, so women could access specialist casework support before they leave violence. The study looked at how effective the centre is in minimising risk through accessible and responsive early intervention support.
It was financed through a matched-funding program run by the University of Newcastle. Jenny's Place CEO Dawn Walker said the idea came from former CEO Marcia Chapman.
"She recognised the importance of early intervention," Ms Walker said. "She also wanted to find a way to prove that it was really effective."
The study looked at prior data, board documents, annual reports, information inside refuges and interviews with staff and clients. Lead researcher Professor Margaret Alston said it found there was 80 per cent satisfaction among the participants.
"So in terms of the findings, we found that the work is essential," Professor Alston said. "Domestic violence assaults here in the Hunter have been trending upwards for the last five years.
"We found that the work the service does is really complex. The sorts of areas that women identified that they received help from through our survey were things like mental health, financial assistance, safety planning, social support, relationship counseling and legal support."
Ms Walker said the findings backed up that the program was needed.
"The findings proved that the early intervention program is highly effective, that the women that use it believed and still believe it saved their lives," she said.
"The women who need this type of service have very, very complex needs from a social care perspective and so they need an awful lot of help."
The study recommended changes including increased responsiveness through additional staff and making the service available 24 hours a day.
It also suggested introducing more support for children, housing support, trauma-informed help and most of all, increased funding for the service. The centre does not receive government funding.
"The study found that the shortage of secure and ongoing funding remains the primary barrier for the centre remaining responsive to unprecedented socio-historic and economic conditions," Professor Alston said.
Ms Walker supported the recommendations.
"Going to a 24/7 model, that makes perfect sense because a lot of violence happens at night, weekends and public holidays. Expanding our reach to more rural and remote areas also makes sense," she said.
Ms Walker said while the study was small, the results were clear.
"This was not a massive study of hundreds of thousands of women," she said.
"It was a small study that fit the size of our budget, but it was a clean study. So the results and the findings that came back are completely from a science and a data perspective.
"We can use that as a blueprint to really establish, not only how important research is so that we can properly understand what people need, but also the importance of early intervention in saving lives.
"I think we have to keep early intervention at the very heart of the solution.
"All of our services and focus for decades when it comes to domestic violence, all the resources have been predominantly to the back end of the problem, so once the damage is done.
"The one thing that has not happened is a reduction in those domestic violence rates, so we have to take a different approach and we have to think differently about the problem.
"I think that is getting much more heavily involved with the men in our community and keeping men at the center of the solution."
Lead researcher Professor Margaret Alston said she was not aware of other studies of this type in Australia, and believed the Jenny's Place model could be used as a blueprint by other services.
"We couldn't really find anything in Australia that was as structured and as well developed as this," she said.
Ms Walker said having the data would allow the service to advocate and report better.
"Data is a real issue in our sector," she said. "About 85 per cent of our earnings are channeled towards staff and most of those staff are case workers, so there's a very strong human aspect in everything that we do, which means administration and the science of data take the back seat.
"The way we capture data differs service to service, the way we collate and report that date differs service to service and all of that data feeds up to government.
"If the data is inconsistent, government cannot properly respond when they don't fully understand what's happening. So data is one of the most important things that we need to correct and create a consistent process and system for."
