http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/hom...1228-766g.html
* December 29, 2008
* Page 1 of 2 | Single Page View
WHEN most people think of homelessness, they think of kids on the streets doing drugs, alcoholics nursing bottles of booze on park benches and people with mental illnesses wandering the streets begging for a gold coin.
But concealed in the official statistics are large numbers of single mothers struggling to bring up children in the most dire of circumstances.
While their plight attracts little in the way of media interest or community sympathy, they make up the majority of people flooding homelessness services in the hope of finding shelter for their families.
Most homeless single mothers are in this situation not because they fall on bad financial times or have problems with addiction, but because they are the victims of domestic violence, the foremost cause of homelessness in Australia.
Women who flee the family home most often do so to protect their children and to save themselves — 55 per cent of the women accompanied by children seeking assistance from homelessness services are running from abusive relationships.
But the statistics about women and children made homeless through domestic violence tell only part of a complicated story.
Many women who leave violent relationships seek the support of friends and relatives rather than go to refuges or shelters.
There simply aren't the resources to accommodate the number of women and children seeking shelter — almost half the women who do approach refuges will be turned away.
Those women often return to violence and abuse rather than have their children sleep rough in parks, in railway stations or in cars. That 42 women were killed by their intimate partners in Australia in 2006-2007 is a chilling reminder of just how perilous the home can be for some women. While single mothers spiral into poverty and homelessness, the perpetrators of violence often stay in the family home.
If the men guilty of violence were removed, women and children would not have to surrender their home, and the homeless numbers would decline almost immediately
* December 29, 2008
* Page 1 of 2 | Single Page View
WHEN most people think of homelessness, they think of kids on the streets doing drugs, alcoholics nursing bottles of booze on park benches and people with mental illnesses wandering the streets begging for a gold coin.
But concealed in the official statistics are large numbers of single mothers struggling to bring up children in the most dire of circumstances.
While their plight attracts little in the way of media interest or community sympathy, they make up the majority of people flooding homelessness services in the hope of finding shelter for their families.
Most homeless single mothers are in this situation not because they fall on bad financial times or have problems with addiction, but because they are the victims of domestic violence, the foremost cause of homelessness in Australia.
Women who flee the family home most often do so to protect their children and to save themselves — 55 per cent of the women accompanied by children seeking assistance from homelessness services are running from abusive relationships.
But the statistics about women and children made homeless through domestic violence tell only part of a complicated story.
Many women who leave violent relationships seek the support of friends and relatives rather than go to refuges or shelters.
There simply aren't the resources to accommodate the number of women and children seeking shelter — almost half the women who do approach refuges will be turned away.
Those women often return to violence and abuse rather than have their children sleep rough in parks, in railway stations or in cars. That 42 women were killed by their intimate partners in Australia in 2006-2007 is a chilling reminder of just how perilous the home can be for some women. While single mothers spiral into poverty and homelessness, the perpetrators of violence often stay in the family home.
If the men guilty of violence were removed, women and children would not have to surrender their home, and the homeless numbers would decline almost immediately
