Deliver the Keeping Women Safe in their Homes program
Responsible government
- Tasmania
Fourth Action Plan actions
- Improve support and service system responses
- 20 Improve access to suitable and safe accommodation within their communities for women who have experienced domestic, family and sexual violence.
What are we doing?
The Keeping Women Safe program provides access to security upgrades for women and children experiencing family violence so that they can remain safely in their own home or a home of their choice. Types of security upgrades include security screens, doors, locks and security cameras with capacity to collect admissible evidence and sensor lights.
- Deliver the Keeping Women Safe In Their Homes program is an action under Safe Homes, Families, Communities: Tasmania’s action plan for family and sexual violence 2019-2022 (Safe Homes, Families, Communities), which invests $26 million over three years from 2019-20 to 2021-22 to prevent and respond to family and sexual violence in Tasmania.
What have we achieved so far?
Safe Homes, Families, Communities commenced implementation on 1 July 2019. The Keeping Women Safe program is an ongoing initiative that commenced under the previous action plan, Safe Homes, Safe Families: Tasmania’s Family Violence Action Plan 2015-2020.
In March 2021, the Tasmanian Government allocated additional funding under Safe Homes, Families, Communities to meet increased demand for the Keeping Women Safe in their Homes program.
What is next?
Ongoing delivery of service.
Safe at Home, Tasmania’s criminal justice response to family violence, is founded on the principle of the ‘primacy of the safety of the victim’ and uses a pro-arrest, pro-prosecution strategy to realise this principle. Therefore, victim-survivors are supported to stay in their own home where it is safe to do so. However, where the safety of people requires a person to leave their residence, the Tasmanian Government provides supported housing options and in April 2020, introduced Flexible Support Packages to cover practical expenses when leaving an abusive relationship.
The program has been highly successful and additional funding has been allocated through the National Partnership on COVID-19 Domestic and Family Violence Responses to continue the program to 30 June 2022.
What difference will we make?
The intended outcomes of this program are:
- Women experiencing/escaping violence are supported to remain in their own home, or a home of their choice, where it is safe to do so
- By being supported to remain in their homes, where it is appropriate, women and children who have experienced violence are able to maintain connection to social and support networks, schools and places of work.
- Women and children have a safer and more stable home environment
- Women and children escaping violence have a reduced risk of homelessness and entry into the traditional temporary crisis accommodation system for women and children escaping violence.
Performance of this program will be monitored via the Australian Government Department of Social Services Data Exchange, including the numbers of clients and sessions.