Anecdotal evidence from homeless services had indicated growing demand from ... women,. # assess the appropriateness of the current service support systems for ... 1 L McFerran, The Disappearing Age, OWN NSW Sydney 2009.
Two Consequences of the Uncovering of Violence Against Older Women: Homelessness and Engaging General Practices : Ludo McFerran, Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse 2010
Warning: Female, single and ageing? You are at risk of homelessness
Background The report, ‘The Disappearing Age’, produced last year by the Older Women’s Network NSW, identified the connection between living with violence and the risk of homelessness for older women. 1 Anecdotal evidence from homeless services had indicated growing demand from older homeless women. This prompted a number of NSW organisations into a partnership. Homeless NSW, St Vincent de Paul Society, the Older Women’s Network NSW 2 , with assistance from the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, are currently conducting a research project to interrogate the definition of homelessness for older women and to build an advocacy base for older homeless women The anecdotal evidence was supported by Supported Accommodation Assistance Program (SAAP) National Data Collections, which record the demand on crisis accommodation services in Australia. 3 . Since 1996-97 there has been a steady increase in the numbers of older female SAAP clients relative to older men. From a base of women making up 33% of older clients in 1996-97, the last Collection (20072008) recorded a slight majority of older female clients. The Research we are doing is an attempt to # # #
understand the pathways to homelessness experienced by older women, assess the appropriateness of the current service support systems for older homeless women and develop a data base for future advocacy and policy recommendations grounded in research findings.
The report on this project is due in July 2010. 1
L McFerran, The Disappearing Age, OWN NSW Sydney 2009. With funding from the NSW Office for Women’s Policy Domestic and Family Violence Grants Program.
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3
AIHW, Homeless People in SAAP: SAAP National Data Collection Annual Report 2007-2008., Table 4.1: SAAP clients: age, by sex, Australia, 2007-08. 2009. Clients 45 and older. Older clients being defined as 45 years and older if Indigenous, and aged 50 years and older if non-Indigenous
Homelessness in context How do we understand why there are now increasing numbers of older women slipping down the housing affordability ladder or entering the homeless population? 4 What are the pathways, the risk alerts, to homelessness for older women? The evidence is that this is a combination of ongoing, entrenched gendered economic disadvantage combined with divorce and separation and a lack of housing affordability. The continued disadvantage experienced by women in the workforce is well known and includes: • fractured work careers because of child bearing and caring • discrimination in terms of pay equity, career opportunities • ageism • all contribute to limited opportunities to accumulate adequate superannuation and assets. Let’s look at a random sample of the evidence of the entrenched nature of gendered economic disadvantage, some of the consequences of being female in 2010 Australia:
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In the past 20 years the number of people living alone in their forties and fifties grew rapidly, the major reason is divorce and separation, and women are more likely to live alone than men. 5
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the financial circumstances of individuals aged 55-74, by marital status and gender, shows that divorced women have the lowest levels of household income, superannuation and assets compared to married people and divorced men. 6
A Sharam , Going it Alone: Single, Low Needs Women and Hidden Homelessness, Women’s Information, Support and Housing in the North, Melbourne, 2008. Andrea interviewed a group of single women between the ages of 35-60 years old on low incomes, ‘slipping’ down the housing ladder’. According to one woman ‘I work with homeless people- sometimes I think they’re better off than me’ (p. 25) 5 D de Vaus & S Richardson, Living alone in Australia: Trends in sole living and characteristics of those who live alone, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Occasional Paper 2009: Census Series Number 4 6 P Flatau, P Hendershott, P Watson & G Wood, What drives housing outcomes in Australia? Understanding the role of aspirations, household formation, economic incentives and labour market interactions, AHURI 2004 Western Australia Research Centre .
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Over a third of women aged 45 and older are not married or living in a de facto relationship. That is 1,285,869 women. 7
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according to the Human Rights Commission: ‘The most serious consequence of the gender gap in retirement savings is the likelihood of poverty for women in retirement’. 8
As summarised by Tually at al: Over the next 10 to 20 years then, Australia’s female population will not only be much older, and also include significant populations of (older) Indigenous women and women from CALD backgrounds, as well as older women with disabilities, it will also include more women who have never married or had children, more women living in de facto relationships or remaining unpartnered for extended periods of time, more women who have had their first child in their 30s (or later still) and more women who are divorced or separated and who will not formally remarry. 9
Furthermore, we also know that the reporting of abuse and violence against older women in increasing. The Personal Safety Survey, Australia (ABS 2006) found that one in four women reporting physical violence in the home were aged 45 and older. That 25% of women reporting domestic violence were older. 10 Significantly, the greatest increase in reporting between the two national safety surveys was by women aged 55 years and over: from 4.4% in 1996 to 10.1% in 2005.
At this point, I need to make some comment on our definitions of ageing. There is little consensus on the threshold of being an ‘older’ adult. The OWN Project chose 45 years and over as the benchmark age for becoming an ‘older woman’. This decision reflects the lower life expectancy of Indigenous women and that 45 years is used as an ageing benchmark by the Personal Safety Survey, Australia.. In the field of domestic and family violence research, 45 is the most common benchmark separating younger and older women. Significant research, for example the VicHealth finding that domestic violence is the greatest health risk for young Victorian women, uses 45 as the cut off point. In choosing the age of 45, the Project recognised that there is a great diversity of experience for women of different ages with vulnerability, poor health and dependency usually increasing as women grow older. We remained concerned by the service and policy gaps for women aged between 45 and 65.
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ABS, Social Marital Status by Age by Sex, Cat. No. 2068.0 2006 Census Tables. 8 C Somali, Accumulating poverty? Women’s experiences of inequality over the lifecycle. An issues paper examining the gender gap in retirement savings. 2009 http://www.hreoc.gov.au/sex_discrimination/publication/gender_gap/index.html 9 S Tually, A Beer & D Faulkner, Too Big to Ignore: Future Issues for Australian Women’s Housing 2006-2025, 2007AHURI Southern Research Centre 10 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Personal Safety Survey, Australia 2005, Cat No 4906.0 Reissue, AGPS, Canberra 2006
The Project also focused on violence against older women in their own homes, as the vast majority of older women continue to live in the community, with only 5% of older Australians living in aged care facilities.
The Women It is in this context, understanding the social and economic pressures on women as they age, that we conducted our research. We interviewed over 30 women: women who have found themselves using homeless services and drop in centres; women in their late 40s to 85, and in many ways, very ordinary women. The first thing that was startling for me was the detail with which women remembered their childhood: the poor health of their mother, the violence of their fathers, being responsible for their siblings by the age of 9, married at 14 to a paedophile, or having three children by the age of 15 to a man in his seventies. Their stories of violent and abusive relationships, many starting as children, are depressingly frequent. Every Indigenous woman told a story of childhood and adolescence which was cursed by abuse, neglect, and separation. Still, many of these women worked all their lives, lived independent lives, and never expected to be homeless. A common experience was a crisis in their fifties or sixties: either a health crisis, often as a result of years of hard physical work, or they were sacked, often because of their age. ‘The company I worked for, I expected to retire from there. Eleven years was a long time, I did my work well, the General Manager said ‘no one looks after my pocket like you do’ They sold the business, I was made redundant. I was devastated. I was about 45 at the time and I thought ‘Where am I going to get a job at my age?’ I found it very hard going to the interviews, there were umpteen others and they are all either younger or more experienced’ Thanks to the crisis, women who had managed to keep their heads above water found themselves drowning. Their families couldn’t help because they themselves were struggling, or in some cases, didn’t want to be associated with a loser. ‘My daughter said ‘Mum, pack your bag, I’m going to take you to Housing. I’m sorry Mum you have to go’ and she dumped me at the local Housing office’. ‘Its not happening, my brothers and sisters will come to my aid, something will happen’ But they wont come to my aid. My family has devastated me. I always thought family are most important. I feel like a murderer. I have a
family only in name. My family can’t support me, how am I supposed to expect strangers to. I would sleep on their floor. I haven’t anything to lose. I have lost my dignity. ‘
Many had developed mental health problems as a result of the crisis and the subsequent homelessness. This suggests that the profile of older homeless Australians, provided in the Commonwealth’s Paper on Homelessness, The Road Home: A National Approach to Reducing Homelessness (2008), is inadequate. There, the causes of homelessness are attributed to disability, mental illness and alcoholism. Our research indicates that for older women these conditions are often effects, not causes. ‘I have always been prone to depression, I knew something wasn’t right, but it could have been because of the marriage because I’m not that depressed now’. One woman in her fifties had spent 25 years in jail. She argued that women leaving jail need to be housed straight away or they will finish up back there. ‘In the last few years I committed the crimes to go back to jail because I got a feed and had a roof over my head. I knew everybody. It was a haven. I had a little bit of dignity and respect in there. I was a hard worker, a compliant inmate.’ She said she would have avoided 10 years of jail time if she had had housing. Despite all this, and I know this is a cliché, these women demonstrated huge reserves of resilience and optimism. They survived, and for those who now had an affordable place to call home, they were happy. ‘I am really enjoying being single and doing my art work’ ‘I am pleased to wake up and I am happy and I am lucky and I count my blessings.’
These are not high-needs or demanding women: asked about what they wanted, they said a spare room where the grandchildren could come and stay, and to have women their own age as neighbours, women they can have as friends, someone to yarn with. ‘I have come to the conclusion you can rely on friends more than family’.
‘Ideally I want a little house with a garden and a car and bedrooms for when all the grandchildren come. That is what women want: their own nesting space for the family to come to’.
Homeless older women remain largely hidden because we do not look in the right places or ask the right questions. When we count the homeless, on census night, we go to where homeless people congregate, but most of the older women we interviewed who had slept rough, these women hid. They hid because of fear of being attacked and because of shame. ‘I have lived in my car on and off and been too ashamed to tell anybody about it, even my own children. The longest was 2 weeks. I was lucky to have a car.’ One woman in her eighties who has slept on the street for years told me why she doesn’t go to homeless shelters: ‘I am not going where there are drunkards, urinating and vomiting and shitting all over, and the mental people breaking into my room because I can’t hear when they come. The danger in places like that is no good for me. Where I am, I have a light over me at night so I can see who ever it is. I sleep mainly in the daytime. I cat nap. ‘
What is being done? Despite the fact that there are now more older homeless women accessing SAAP services than older men, there is not one single funded service specifically for older women in Australia, and only a handful of funded services for single women of all ages. Where crisis accommodation is provided to single women, the evidence from NSW is that, despite the bulk of requests coming from western Sydney, the services are concentrated in the inner suburbs of Sydney. 11 Historically, older women have dropped off the agenda in homeless services. Women’s refuges started with an open door policy but pressure led to prioritising younger women with children. Older women who are accessing SAAP are being accommodated and supported across a wide range of service types: women and children’s, single women, family services, general homeless services, and unfunded services. One consequence is that a strong group of advocates for homeless older women has not developed. They are not the target group for any service or group of services. A major aim of this project on homeless women is to build a strong coalition of advocates to put and keep older women on the homelessness agenda.
11 NSW Homeless Persons Information Centre referral service data for single women (2008-2009) eight inner city Sydney homeless services provided 92% of the accommodation requested in NSW.
I should mention at this point one strategy in the family violence sector that we are promoting to prevent homelessness is to develop safety plans to support the women to stay in the homes by removing, where necessary, the violence person. In states that have extensive domestic violence outreach services into the home, their service system has higher rates of older clients. This is because older women are less likely to leave their homes than younger women. Getting supporting the home is what works for a lot of older women. This may not mean, however, that they want a police intervention, particularly if the abusive partner is elderly and frail or the abusive person is a child or even grandchild. We need to ensure that the legislation covering domestic and family violence is appropriate to the needs of older women, and if not, to amend or introduce appropriate legal protection in the home.
Social Housing: Is It the Answer? Social Housing has been a good provider for long term secure housing for homeless older women up to the present. But there is a clear understanding that social housing will not be able to meet demand into the future. ‘The numbers of older people in low-income rental households will more than double by 2026, and this demand will not be met by the social housing sector alone’ 12
Is Government Policy keeping up? Both the Commonwealth Green and White Papers have acknowledged the growth in the ageing homeless population, but older women are largely missing from their understanding of ageing and homelessness. The NSW Homelessness Strategy failed to acknowledge the impact of ageing, but does emphasis the need for an improved evidence base, perhaps suggesting support for our research into the experience and housing needs of older women. But we are really concerned that the way we count homelessness in Australia is excluding older women. The Commonwealth relies on census data for the homeless count, but consider: In every category of the ‘homeless’ population, except SAAP, women are less represented than men: boarding houses, staying with friends and relatives, in improvised dwellings or sleeping rough We know that many older women sleeping rough hide, and will not be counted.
12 AHURI, Rental housing for lower income older Australians Research and Policy Bulletin 2008 Issue 96
‘Improvised dwellings’ is a description designated by the census collector, not the occupant. Of those in improvised dwellings and counted as homeless, 37% were employed, 25% live in mortgaged properties, and 41% of the household had two or more vehicles. Another anomaly is that 57% of the single largest category of homelessness (those staying with friends) reported an income of $800 per week or more. 13
What do we want? It should be alarming that it is still the case in 2010 the best chance a woman has to safe, affordable and secure housing is through a partnership. We want policies and programs based on appropriate social and economic indicators, and we want the gender differences recognised We want homelessness counts that take into account the evidence of entrenched social and economic disadvantage that is putting older women at risk of homelessness; that fairly represents what is happening for older women. We don’t necessarily want more crisis services for older women. Our evidence is that for many older women who have become homeless they just need a safe, affordable roof over their head and a little support. We certainly need to rethink how we live and what we live in this country, because we have to be planning much more single person housing stock, perhaps in supportive clusters, where older women can share a yarn and a cup of tea.
‘Pathways for Referral: Reducing Violence against Older Women’: a medical pathway model for increasing reporting of violence against older women by General Practitioners One finding of the Disappearing Age was that: ‘GPs represent a critical group of service providers to improve older women’s awareness and reporting of violence and abuse’. 14 OWN NSW wanted to focus on General Practitioners because they are the professional most accessed by older women experiencing abuse in their homes. 13
Homelessness NSW ‘Homelessness in the South Eastern region of NSW; What Counting the Homelessness 2006 tells us’ 2009; ABS Census Dictionary ‘Dwelling Structure’ 2006
14L McFerran, L, The Disappearing Age, OWN NSW Sydney, 2009
Morgan Disney & Associates (2000) found in their study Two lives-Two Worlds: Older people and domestic violence that General Practitioners were identified as the professional group most likely to be accessed by older women (46% compared with 38% police and 9.6% women’s refuges). 15 We note that the Australian Society for Geriatric Medicine (2003) has stated that ‘the medical profession should play a major role in recognition, assessment, and management of cases of abuse and should be part of referral and decision making processes’. 16 Thanks to research by the Victorian Health Department we know that domestic violence and abuse is a serious health risk. In fact VicHealth (2004) found that ‘Intimate partner violence has a greater impact on the health of Victorian women under the age of 45 than any other risk factor’. 17 Given the results of the Personal Safety Survey, that one in four women reporting recent violence are 45 and older, OWN NSW believes that violence and abuse will also have a major impact on the health of older women, particularly in terms of mental health. 18 However, the evidence is that GPs rarely ask patients if anyone is hurting them in their home. GPs have been reluctant and unsure about opening the Pandora’s box of violence and abuse in the home. Kelsey Hegarty from Melbourne University Department of General Practice is an expert in family violence. About GPs, has written: Beyond their initial response, most generalists have neither the expertise nor the capacity to meet the needs of women experiencing partner violence…A key step is an offer of referral to specialist support, such as domestic violence advocacy. 19 OWN NSW was impressed by the work of Jenny Ashwood at the Sydney Women’s Counselling Service, providing a referral service to local GPs for women experiencing domestic violence. In the first six months of 2009 the Older Women’s Network NSW (OWN NSW) conducted the Project ‘Pathways for Referral: Reducing Violence against Older 15 E Morgan,& M Disney, Two lives two worlds: older people and domestic violence, Partnerships against Domestic Violence Project, vol. 1 2000 16
Position Statement No. 1 Elder Abuse, Revised 2003
17 Vic Health, Department of Human Services, The health cost of violence: measuring the burden of disease caused by intimate partner violence, p. 20, Victoria 2004 18 Australian Bureau of Statistics, Personal Safety Survey, Australia, cat. no. 4906.0, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra 2005.
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Hegarty, K, Taft, A, Feder, G,’ Violence between intimate partners: working with the whole family’, BMJ, vol. 337, 2008
Women’ with funding from the Commonwealth Department for Women through WESNET. The aim of the Project was to build on the work Jenny had accomplished, encouraging General Practitioners in three regions (Canterbury, Campbelltown and Nowra) to increase their identification of violence against older female patients and refer patients to a specialist domestic violence service. The Project formed partnerships between local Divisions of General Practice, a specialist domestic violence service able to respond appropriately to older women and the local government council aged and community development staff. OWN NSW’s evaluation of the Project was that valuable resources were developed, including a FAQ for GPs on the health risks of domestic violence for older women. The FAQs, for example, described the symptoms of abuse that had been identified by a range of medical and abuse specialists. These included: • • • • •
Depression or anxiety Agitation or disrupted sleeping and eating habits Unexplained paranoia or excessive fear Injuries are unexplained or explanations are implausible (they do not "fit" with the injuries observed) Bilateral bruising may indicate that the person has been shaken, grabbed, or restrained, and are rarely accidental 20
OWN NSW continue to believe that GPs are a key to greater disclosure and that there is real value in the model of a regional specialist domestic violence service to act as a referral point for GPs. We also continue to believe in the value of collaborative projects where services and professionals from the health, aged and domestic violence sectors work together. As a result, the NSW Women’s Refuge Movement was approached for support in distributing similar FAQS into GP surgeries across NSW with a poster that states: Is someone hurting you at home? You can talk with your doctor. The materials have been endorsed by the peaks bodies General Practice NSW and the Royal Australian College of General practitioners, and funded by NSW Health. . The fifty five NSW women’s refuges have agreed to seek partnerships with local Divisions of General Practice, local government councils and aged care services to visit local surgeries and distribute the materials provided by OWN NSW. Surgeries 20 Department of Ageing Disability and Home Care, Interagency Protocol for Responding to Abuse of Older People, NSW, pp. 7-8, 2007; L Mosqueda, Innovative approaches to addressing elder abuse: successes and barriers, presented at the Australian Association of Gerontology Conference, 24th November 2008; National Committee for the Prevention of Elder Abuse 2008, Elder Abuse, accessed 9 February 2009,
