As we watch essential services being decimated by funding cuts I think it is timely to consider what value we place on services which support the most vulnerable within our community. The agencies most at risk are the smaller services, the women’s only services, the community services that are not linked or partnered with larger agencies and those which provide diverse services that do not necessarily ‘fit’ within a particular funding stream.
Several years ago, I was involved in a battle to save the funding of a small Centre in Western Sydney. At the time, one of the comments made was that ‘the Department needs to be sure it is getting value for money’. This conversation recurs again and again as we restructure, revamp, defund and tender to the lowest bidder and as we watch the services we fought for disappear.

What ‘value’ do we place on a woman’s life, or a child’s future, or the future of disadvantaged and struggling communities?

For some years, I worked as a counsellor in women’s services and sexual assault services. One of the challenges we often spoke about was in regard to ‘quantifying’ what we do in an increasingly results based accountability framework. How do you quantify that someone did not kill themselves? How do you ‘quantify’ that, because a woman came to a service, got ongoing and free counselling to deal with her childhood sexual assault, that woman did not end up in the mental health system and was better able to parent her kids? How do you quantify the life freeing effect of realising in a group that YOU do not need to feel shame for what was done TO you? How do you place value on the life of a woman and children who, because they came to a service and asked for help, were able to leave a domestic violence situation and therefore did not become a statistic? How do you ‘value’ the little boy who, because his mother got help, and left his violent father, and made sure the child got support and counselling, did not grow up to repeat the abusive patterns he had lived with?

How do I place value on the life of the 16 year old boy who was brought to a service by his sister? She knew about this service because she came to a group. She knew we were an approachable and accessible service. She knew me and the other workers there. So when her brother came out as gay and his father and brothers tried to kill him, she came to us for help. He had black eyes, a split lip, and, we later discovered, a broken wrist, he was terrified, so was she. What value do we place on that boy getting into a youth refuge, getting help and support, being safe?

There is an amazing group that meets at a small and underfunded Centre in the middle of a disadvantaged area of Western Sydney. They are strong, cohesive group of Aboriginal women from a variety of backgrounds. They meet at the Centre because it is a safe and accessible space, easy to get to, but far enough from the ‘shit’ that happens in the local shopping centre to allow women to talk and meet freely. They meet there because they can make coffee whenever they like, hang out in the backyard, sit around and yarn without being interrupted, laugh as loudly as they like without disturbing anyone. Some of the women in the group have been in jail, some have alcohol and drug issues, most live or have lived in violence, most have experienced grief and loss, all have experienced racism and discrimination. How do you place value on women who have frequently been negated, put down and treated appallingly working together for change in their own community? How do you place value when women from this group and women from CALD and newly arrived communities meet at the Centre, take part in activities, eat together and share stories and begin to form healthy strong connections that challenge racism, misunderstanding and hatred?

Community workers in general are not highly paid , in general, we do not take long lunches, we do not drive company cars, we do not spend large amounts on phones/laptops/ equipment. We work from a Department of Housing houses in the middle of a disadvantaged suburbs, from shopfronts in run down shopping Centres, from our cars and in community halls, in Courthouses, in hospitals and wherever there is a need and a service. We buy essential supplies as cheaply as we can, we often work longer hours than we claim, we seek out opportunities to resource our groups from free/cheap sources, we often do our own cleaning as there is no cleaner in our budget and we use energy we would rather give to our clients desperately chasing funding for projects, services and to provide more for the clients we support. Even within the narrow definition of ‘value’ that seem to be current, we do provide ‘value’ for money. However, it is the less quantifiable and more human value of what we do that is frequently overlooked.

Many socially and economically disadvantaged people do not trust or have faith in mainstream services. Aboriginal people have a long history with the ‘welfare’, and do not often easily or readily approach services connected with the government. Many of our newer residents, from war torn countries and oppressive regimes, have fear of ‘government departments’ and of official processes. Some women cannot attend or approach a service where there are male workers or clients, both for cultural reasons, or because of their history of male violence. People from communities such as this and similar communities, may live lives filled with economic crises and chaos, with a long history of feeling ‘less than’ and of being patronised and put down by ‘officials’. For some, experiences with Centrelink, Housing and Community Services have been negative. To ring, for example, a hospital based counselling service, to be told they need to come in for an intake interview in three weeks, to have to organise transport (often with no money) and to go into an environment that feels clinical, and to not know who they might have to see, places insurmountable obstacles in the path of getting help. What value do we place on people in these situations being able to get support, referrals, advocacy and some sense of their own right to all these things? How do we place value on these services being available somewhere that is accessible, known to the community, seen as a safe place and also has knowledge, skills and information to share?

One of the expressed concerns that has emerged from the recent reviews has been that priority needs to be given to child protection services. None of us would argue with that. However, child protection STARTS with the community. We cannot underestimate the place of smaller and more accessible services within that continuum.

When we provide community education about domestic violence and sexual assault, that knowledge and information becomes part of the community’s knowledge. How do you place value on the auntie who hears how violence affects children, and passes this message on to her niece? How do we place value on the young girl who learns about healthy relationships, and therefore does not stay with someone who abuses her? How do you place value on women learning skills and knowledge to support their sisters?

When I first realised that a service I had been employed to manage ran sewing and craft groups I was a little disconcerted. However, very rapidly I realised that these groups are accessible and acceptable for women who cannot or would not attend a domestic violence, self-esteem or parenting group. Within these seemingly ‘recreational’ groups women gain support, friendship, information and a sense of belonging. Different cultures, backgrounds, ages mix and learn about each other, share information, share their lives and break down many of the barriers of misunderstanding and racism. Women living in violence find support there, they get to know workers and therefore feel comfortable asking for help. Young mums struggling to parent get advice, support and affirmation.

Isolation can be a contributing factor to depression, anxiety and other mental health issues, all of which can affect parenting. How do we place value on the young, isolated mother, whose English is limited, and who has no family here, meeting together with women of different ages and backgrounds, getting support, being reassured and not being lonely? How do you place value on the woman whose own long term trauma is affecting her parenting and who is afraid to reach out for help until she meets with other women with similar experiences?

Mothers attend services, so do grandmas, aunties, sisters and knowledge gained becomes available to families. Some services run holiday programs and after school activities for children. How do we value the affect of a positive, creative experience on a child whose opportunity for these experiences is limited by poverty, disadvantage, or family problems? How do we value the effect on a woman who, because she attends a drug and alcohol support group, and overcomes her addiction, does not end up losing her children to the system because of neglect? Knowledge and skills within the community, support of women and children before they reach crisis point and access to appropriate referrals and advocacy, keep children out of the system, keep children safe within their families and communities and are integral parts of a responsible child protection framework.
We cannot measure the number of kids who DON’T end up in the system, the number of women who DON’T die in domestic violence, the number of children who DON’T grow up normalising violence and abuse, the number of women who DON’T end up in the mental health system, the number of families who DON’T fall apart.

Recently, cuts are anticipated to the refuges which, since their inception in the 70’s, have been place of hope and support for women escaping violence. Feminist, women run refuges have been a force for change within our community, a place of hope for those who see no hope, a place where mothers and children can be safe and begin to heal. The sheer stupidity of, at one level asking ‘why women don’t leave’, and at the next level cutting funding to services which support women leaving appals me. There are many reasons why women are trapped in abusive situations – fear, threats, poverty, and lack of support, the slow destruction of their confidence, lack of knowledge, societal pressure, community pressure and many more. However, at its most simplistic level HOW THE HELL CAN WOMEN LEAVE IF THEY HAVE NOWHERE SAFE TO GO?

I do not claim to fully understand economics, or our economic framework, and I realise that this may be a simplistic viewpoint. However, my concern is that, while we focus purely on a monetary deficit – and decimate our community services in an effort to create a monetary surplus, we are overlooking the human deficit we create. We can see and measure a financial deficit, but can we see and measure the long term effects of a deficit in services and support to the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of our community? Can we place ‘value’ on the lives lost, damaged, destroyed, and the loss of potential for growth and change, that cuts to essential services within our community create?

This was another fairy tale – an attempt to understand the devastating impact of domestic violence on children.

The Monster

Once upon a time there was a little boy, who lived with his mummy, his daddy and his baby sister in a house in a quiet street. The little boy was mostly happy. He had a big garden with a swing and a sandpit and sometimes his friends came and played. His mummy read him stories of a night and his daddy played games with him. He even had come to quite to like his baby sister although he couldn’t really see what use she was. Some things puzzled the little boy. He didn’t understand why his mummy cried sometimes and always said she had something in her eyes. It gave him funny feeling in his tummy when she cried and he wondered if he had done something wrong. The little boy had a scary secret though. Sometimes a Monster came to their house. He knew it was a secret because he had once tried to tell his kindergarten teacher and she had talked to mummy and after that his teacher had said he had a ‘big imagination’ and mummy told him not to talk about things like that at kindergarten. That was another time when he got the funny tummy feeling.

The Monster never came when Daddy was there. The little boy thought the Monster must watch the house because he always came on the nights that Daddy was late and he and his baby sister had to go to bed early and not come out of their room no matter what. The little boy knew his Daddy was big and strong – he could throw the little boy up in the air and catch him and lift heavy things. The little boy knew that if Daddy was there when the Monster came he would chase him away.

But the Monster never came when Daddy was there. The Monster screamed and yelled and things would break and his mother would cry and sometimes scream. Sometimes next day she would have a bruises on her arms or a sore back and he would have to help her more with the baby and sometimes he had to miss school. The little boy knew that his daddy felt bad when the Monster had come because sometimes he would hear him crying when he got home and sometimes he would send mummy flowers the next day and he had once heard him saying sorry over and over again. The little boy didn’t understand why his mummy didn’t ring his daddy when the Monster came the way she had when the little boy fell over and cut his head one day.
Once the little boy ran out of his room when he heard the Monster shouting. His mummy grabbed him and quickly put him back to bed and told him an angry voice not at all like her usual voice to stay there.

The little boy had a very funny feeling in his tummy that night and he cried even though Daddy had told him he was a big boy and big boys don’t cry. Because it was that night that the little boy learnt the scariest thing about the Monster. The Monster looked a bit like his Daddy. Not a lot like him. Daddy had a laughing face and a big voice but not a shouting one. The Monster’s face was red and twisted in a scary way and his voice was loud and shouting and he said words that the little boy knew weren’t allowed to be said unless you wanted to be in Big Trouble. Daddy smelt like the stuff he put on his face when he shaved and like soap and sometimes like just Daddy. The Monster had a different smell somehow like Grandma’s house when she made the Christmas cake but not quite the same. But he did look a bit like Daddy and that was the scariest thing of all.

After that night the little boy stayed in his room when the Monster came. Sometimes the shouting went on for a long time. But the little boy did not go to sleep. Mostly his baby sister slept through the shouting but he was worried she might wake up and be scared so he mostly sat next to her cot and he listened, listened, listened longing for his Daddy to come and make the Monster go away. And the feeling in his tummy was so bad that he thought he might be sick and sometimes it didn’t go away for days.

One night the Monster came earlier than usual and the baby sister was awake. When the shouting started to get louder the baby sister began to cry and he heard his Mummy crying too. The little boy had just learnt to use the phone and he thought he could maybe ring his Daddy and get him to come. He ran out of his door and to the phone in the hall.
As he grabbed it he saw the Monster coming towards him and he screamed in horror. He heard his mummy crying out ‘no!’ and then the Monster had him and he remembered nothing for a long time.

When the little boy woke up he wasn’t at home in his own bed. He was very scared and his head hurt and he cried even though he was a big boy. But soon a nurse came and explained about hospital and the stitches in his head and that his mummy would be here soon. Strangers came and asked him questions but he knew not to talk to strangers so he didn’t tell them anything. When his mummy came she was very glad to see him and hugged him and told him she was sorry. He didn’t understand at all but he was afraid to ask too many questions. He didn’t want to remember the Monster.

The little boy was afraid that the Monster had killed his daddy. He had to talk to a stranger and tell about the night he got hurt but the stranger didn’t understand about the Monster and kept asking about Daddy and didn’t seem to believe that Daddy had not been there.

The little boy did not like it when he and his mum and baby sister went to live in a big house with other Mums and their children. He didn’t like the noise and having to sleep all in the same room and he cried at night for his Daddy and his house. He was happy when they moved back to their old house but Daddy was still not there and the boy became more and more sure that the Monster had killed him. But mummy told him that soon he would be having something called access with his daddy and the little boy felt happy but his mummy was crying so he did not know what to say. He stayed awake at night a lot watching for the Monster even though his mum told him he was safe now.

One night he was sleeping and when he woke up he heard shouting and loud scary voices and he knew the Monster was back.
He got out of bed and went to check on his baby sister but she wasn’t in her cot and he knew Mummy must have come and picked her up earlier. The shouting got louder and he wanted to run away and then there were loud banging noises like on TV and he crouched in the corner of the room and hoped his little sister wasn’t too scared by the Monster. His tummy felt so funny that he was sick on the floor but he still stayed where he was even when all the noise stopped. It was quiet for a long time and then he heard sirens and more shouting and lights flashed outside his window and someone said Very Bad words. When the door opened he screamed but a Policeman was there and a Police Lady and they picked him up and took him out of the house and the Policeman was crying he thought and that made him very very scared.

That night they stayed at a stranger’s house but he didn’t talk to the stranger and he waited for his mummy to come all next day but it wasn’t mummy who came. Far away Grandma came who lived somewhere called Interstate and usually only came at Christmas. Far away Grandma was crying when she saw him and she told him that Mummy and his baby sister had gone to live in heaven but when he asked about Daddy she said ‘don’t mention that monster’s name’. And the little boy was very confused.

And Grandma said that he would come to live with her in Interstate. The little boy knew he would never be able to ask her about Daddy or about whether it was the little boy’s fault that the Monster came back and that his Mummy and little sister had been made dead. And he decided he would be very quiet and very good and he would stay awake as much as he could and watch for Monsters. And when he grew up he would be careful not to trust anyone, for Monsters could look like someone you loved and if you weren’t careful they could take away everything you cared about in one night.

In almost every town in Australia, no matter how small, there is a war memorial. Somehow, those chiselled names are poignant, no matter what your views on war. There are stories there, sadness, a reminder that war has a high cost.

There are no memorials for the women who die in the war against women. There are no ceremonies, no flag draped coffins, often no acknowledgement. What would it be like if, in every town, there was a memorial for the women killed by male violence?

The dilemma here, however, is what deaths would we include? How do we number our casualties in the unnamed war?

There are the deaths we see and can account for – the woman shot after she left her partner, the woman who dies of injuries inflicted in the last of many beatings, the children murdered in an act of revenge, the woman and her children burnt to death in a fire set by a her estranged partner, the woman whose abuser pursued her across three states and found her and killed her in front of her children. For a brief moment these stories are front page news, for a brief moment we stop and ask questions and are outraged. But there are no memorials, no concrete etched with these names, no ceremonies of remembrance.

What about the deaths that aren’t acknowledged?

The woman who, after years of abuse, kills herself when the pain becomes too much, the survivor of child sexual abuse who suicides after years of trying to fight her demons, the woman who drinks herself to death or overdoses on drugs because she needs something to numb the pain and the memories, the woman killed in a car accident caused by her partner screaming at her as she tries to drive, the countless women who take their own life in the aftermath of trauma, bashings, rape, childhood abuse.
Can we count the girl who sells herself because she has been taught that that is her only value and dies at the hands of a man who buys her?
Can we count the boy who learns violence in his home and dies by violence in the streets?

And what of those who don’t die?

I validate and support the resilience of woman. I do not believe that abuse, violence, rape irreparably damages women and children.Women can and do reclaim their lives. I know we can survive, I know we can rebuild, but the costs are high and the losses can be devastating.
And there are no medals, no parades for those who do survive and thrive and build meaningful lives among the ruins.

The collateral damage in the war against women is unseen, unaccounted, unacknowledged.

She is 25, beautiful, intelligent, and creative. .
She grew up in a hell of violence, abuse, neglect. She reclaimed her life with great courage.
Three years ago she was raped again. She has lost her job, her dream of going to university, most of her friends. She cannot bear to leave the house. For three years she has been trapped within her own four walls.

She is 65. She cares for her elderly father who in his aging does not recognise her. She feeds him, wipes his bum, changes his nappies and tries to never remember his hands on her body for most of her childhood. She cared for her mother until her death and endured each day the bitterness and anger of her mother’s rage at her own helplessness and loss of opportunity. She weeps every night, for her loneliness and the emptiness that surrounds her. She was a bright little girl, all her teachers said so, and she dreamed briefly of university, of teaching or nursing of being ‘someone’. But her role, as daughter, was to submit, to leave behind her dreams and hopes and take care of her parents. She lost any confidence she might have had under the whip of her father’s rages and the secrecy of his touching.

She is forty and the mother of two grown children. She has not seen her daughters for twenty years. They were placed in care as babies. Her face bears the lines and scars of a life lived mostly in thrall to alcohol. People mistake her for a much older woman. She is trying to dry out again, but the fear drives her back every time. She’s drunk since she was twelve, it helped her to endure the bashings, the beatings, the screaming, smashing rages of her father. Without the cushion of booze reality stalks her head, the nightmares return and she lives on the edge of crippling fear. She relives the nights crouching under the kitchen chairs, hiding in the bathroom, listening to her mother’s screams and she remembers the night he killed her. The booze silences her head, silences the screams. She knows it will kill her and she doesn’t really care.

She is 32, with three degrees and a flourishing career . She is always impeccably dressed and groomed. Men watch her with lust, women with envy. She has friends, a lover, a busy and active social life, money, a house in a good suburb. Her lover has never seen her naked. She wakes at night next to him and wonders if she will ever let him see her scars. She has been cutting since she was ten and she realised the awful release and relief in self harming. She once tried to tell her mother that her adult stepbrother came to her room each night and raped her but her mother refused to hear and punished her for being dirty. The blade, the knife, the carton cutter comfort her as her mother did not. She is never without some instrument that can inflict the blood red release. She sometimes wonders what her colleagues would think if they knew that beneath her always appropriate wardrobe she if often bleeding. She is not sure how she will explain the scars if her lover ever sees them. She wonders how long they can continue to make love in the dark.

She is fourteen and has already lost count of the men she has fucked. Her face and her body belong to a woman much older but her eyes are the eyes of a terrorised child. She will tell you to fuck off and worse if you annoy her. Her father sold her for drugs from the time she was six or seven ,she doesn’t quite remember, sometime after her mother overdosed she thinks…or maybe before. Now, she sells herself, and feels in charge and doesn’t do drugs, although she drinks sometimes. She lives with various friends, in squats or cars, or boarding house rooms smelling of mildew and sweat and the ghosts of a thousand takeaways. One day she will be old enough to get a proper job, and then maybe she will go back to school and learn to read properly, she liked school when she went, it was quiet there and clean and the no-one hurt her. She tried foster care once, when she was about twelve, but she couldn’t seem to figure out what the rules were. They didn’t cope when she woke screaming and offered the father a blow job if he let her lock her door at night.

She is 90 and in a nursing home. Her mind is no longer her own. When the nurses undress her, tend her, slow tears leak from her eyes. She pushes their hands away with what little remaining strength she has and mutters, “Don’t, don’t.” They wonder at the scars on her body.

He is seven and learning that violence is the way you get what you want – learning that power is in fists and raised voices and standing over someone and smashing and breaking and beating.

She is five and learning that love looks like black eyes and crying and blood and flowers the day after.

There are thousands of stories, thousands of uncounted losses.
How do you measure the bright, intelligent girl who leaves home and school at 14 to escape the violence?
How do you measure the creative, artistic child whose childhood hell results in years of mental health admissions and depression so deep that her creativity drowns in it?
How do you measure the student, raped on campus, who cannot bear to return to study?
How do you measure the woman who leaves an abusive relationship and faces homelessness and poverty?

How do you count the costs?

There are no memorials for our casualties, no lone bugles, no flags or salutes.

And the war continues.