Supporting women at a distance during COVID-19

CAWLS staff are working around the clock to adapt and grow with the new world of distancing and COVID-19 🌏

This week, CAWLS Legal Practitioner, Dotti, attended an online webinar, hosted by Wesnet on “Supporting women at a distance during COVID-19” and would like to share with our followers her review of the discussions 💭

🗣 “I really enjoyed the webinar put on by WESNET and Women’s Refuge NZ and found it really informative. The purpose of the webinar was to share the findings of a comprehensive survey both agencies created together to capture how services are responding and assisting to women at risk during the COVID-19 crisis. Because Alice Springs is so isolated, and now even more so, it was really interesting to get together with similar service providers from across both countries, share our stories and better understand how the pandemic is affecting women who experience domestic violence.

Some of the stats were pretty sobering – for example, police applications for Protection Orders in NZ have decreased 49% since the lockdown started. However, crisis services in NZ are reporting a dramatic increase in crisis calls. This indicates that police resources are being used elsewhere and women are facing serious difficulties in accessing protection services.

Overall the webinar emphasised that domestic violence hasn’t decreased during the pandemic, but that the restrictions imposed create significant barriers for women who need to seek support and assistance.”