Christine Lodge

speaker

59 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jun 2026 last heard 30 Jun

Christine Lodge’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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The Claire Byrne Show · Almost 1,900 women were turned away from domestic violence refuges · 30 Jun 2026 podcast

They can't access, for many, many reasons, they can't access safe, appropriate alternative accommodation.

So many are choosing to stay and not bring their children into refuge for fear of homelessness.

I mean, when we look at the capacity within the current refuge system of 527 for children,

And we can see from our census, there was only 93 children in refuge at the time of the census.

That tells us that although we had 162 women in refuge, there wasn't the amount of children that we would have expected.

And that's because women are too fearful to bring the children into refuge for fear of homelessness.

Well, what they're saying is that it's taken them some women, it's taken them many years to make that decision to leave.

And for a lot of these women, they would have been supported for many years by their local DV service to make that decision when they were ready.

But when they make that decision to move, the fear is that they won't have any place to go.

And some women will leave because it's unsafe to stay at home, but they might have to stay with family members.

They might be sofa surfing.

They might be bringing their children from home to home until refuge accommodation or alternative accommodation can become available.

So the lived experience is that some might say when they make the decision to leave, that's the biggest decision.

But what happens then is that the pathway out of abuse is just simply not there.

So even though they've made that huge decision,

the systemic barriers that they face does not make that an easier journey out of abuse.

Exactly, because not every woman is, you know, half or social housing is not available to a lot of women for various reasons, you know, in terms of their means or they might be co-property owners or have co-tenancies.

So there's plenty of limitations and systemic barriers that women face when they're leaving refuge.

And that's why there's such a reluctance to come into a refuge in the first place.

Well, the staff turning women away is a last resort.

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