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More safe houses for Hutt

Brittany Keogh brittany.keogh@stuff.co.nz

Hutt Valley police are launching a new family harm prevention hub and the local women’s refuge is looking to up its safe house capacity in response to high and rising rates of family violence in the area.

Family violence in Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt appeared to have spiked over lockdown and both organisations are expecting to see another increase leading up to Christmas.

Hutt Valley Women’s Refuge had a 17 per cent rise in police referrals when the country was in lockdown in August, causing its safe houses to fill up. The situations its clients were escaping had also appeared to have increased in severity, a spokeswoman, who could not be named for safety reasons, said.

‘‘The violence is a lot more intense this time around . . . We were extremely close to capacity.’’

The refuge expected to see the same trend occur again if the region went back into lockdown and had since launched a fundraising campaign to expand and upgrade its network of safe houses so that it was prepared for a potential increase in need.

It is aiming to raise $10,000 to pay for additional safe house facilities, as well as renovations to its existing homes.

‘‘Our safe houses are really run down because they are in constant use. They’ll never be empty . . . We have lots of quite old appliances that need replacing. We plan to get in there and paint ... We want women and children to feel really safe and secure when they arrive,’’ the spokeswoman said.

She could not say how many safe houses the refuge operated or the number of families in them because of privacy and safety concerns.

However, she said the wa¯hine and tamariki had left ‘‘really, really high risk’’ situations. They could spend anywhere between a night and several months at a safe house, depending on their individual needs.

Te Awa Kairangi Hutt Valley police area commander, Inspector Dion Bennett said while official data for call-outs in alert level 4 were not yet available, anecdotally, his team had seen a ‘‘small increase’’ in family harm events compared with last year’s lockdown.

‘‘This time, we noticed more first-time families involved in family harm occurrences,’’ he added.

Bennett said rates of family harm were consistently higher in the Hutt Valley than elsewhere in the Wellington region and the problem was likely underreported.

Ultimately, police hoped to prevent instances of family harm before they occurred, rather than responding to them. For that reason Te Awa Kairangi Hutt Valley police planned to launch a specialist family harm prevention hub in central Lower Hutt before Christmas, bringing together police and other social support services such as refuges and kaupapa Ma¯ ori wha¯ nau services in one location.

The hub would not operate as a police station. Its purpose was to ensure people affected by family harm or at risk of being affected by it could access the right support.

Specialist officers would also be based at the hub, which will operate as a drop-in centre where anyone can go to seek help or advice about family harm, including wha¯ nau and friends who had concerns about their loved ones, victims and offenders.

National News

en-nz

2021-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmedia.pressreader.com/article/281603833613911

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