Via SOSwomensservices on Facebook
Homeless women need safe women-only refuges.
The NSW Government wants to close them down.
JOIN THE CAMPAIGN NOW.
40 years of women’s rights will be undone in June 2014 when many of Sydney’s specialist women’s refuges are forced to close.
Under the NSW Government’s new tenders, women-only services were not allowed to tender for women-only services.
Most affected will be the women who are homeless or at risk of homelessness due to childhood abuse and neglect, sexual assault, serious mental illness, leaving custody issues and drug and alcohol addiction.
Brought to you by a Coalition of women and women’s services protecting the rights of homeless women and children in NSW.
It’s tragic and wrong on every level but true. When the NSW Government announces tenders for homeless services this month, there will be mass closures of women’s refuges. 40 years of hard, solid work housing women and children and working together to re-establish lives and getting people out of homelessness and into living stable healthy lives will be finished, gone, done. Many of Sydney’s specialist refuges will close and others around NSW are also being affected. This is because the women-only services were not able to tender as women-only, and the tenders did not allow for their specialisation and client numbers. Women-only specialist services for women who are homeless due to mental illness, drug and alcohol dependency, childhood sexual abuse and leaving custody are particularly affected and will be closing.
It’s a drizzly day in Sydney, aka a ‘perfect’ day to write emails to Members of Parliament (if you’ve not done so already), and to get get your friends and colleagues to send emails too. We need to let the Government know that women’s services are necessary and that the tender process has excluded them from continuing. Everything you need to get started is here: www.soswomensservices.com/campaign-resources/
Categories: crisis, ethics & philosophy, gender & feminism, social justice
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What is going on in Australia? It sounds like they have been taken over by MRAs. Australia decided to go for a presumption of shared parenting, something “father’s rights” groups have been pushing for, and it has been a nightmare for the kids. And now this. Some father’s rights groups tried to do the same thing in the States, to shut down women’s shelters on the same grounds, but so far they haven’t succeeded.