Australia's first trauma recovery centre for women who have experienced gendered violence has opened its doors in the New South Wales Illawarra region. It's the product of several years of campaign and research co-authored by victim survivors. Many of the team who helped create the centre where there for the launch.
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00:00There have been tears of joy today at the official opening of Australia's first Women's
00:07Trauma Recovery Centre in the Illawarra. The project itself was born of an idea some seven
00:12years ago by a group of fierce women advocates and victim survivors themselves. We've been
00:18allowed inside today to see the outcome of all of that vision. It's a trauma-informed
00:24space co-designed by the victim survivors with the interiors all created to ensure their
00:31comfort and recovery. At the time they first dreamed of this centre being opened, the local
00:39women in the region who were providing support for women and children fleeing domestic violence
00:44and sexual abuse were overwhelmed by the scale of what was needed to support women escaping
00:51violence. It was unfair and unjust that as a society where we didn't protect the women
00:58we were not even providing a service for recovery and healing so the gap was significant. It's
01:04absolutely needing to be filled going forward, not just here in the Illawarra but across
01:08Australia. After knocking on lots of doors and talking to lots of politicians they were
01:14eventually granted $25 million from the federal government, the Morrison government at the
01:18time, who is said to have said if he could have had five more centres he would have provided
01:23the additional funding. So after years of work this centre's finally opened. It had
01:29a soft opening about a couple of months ago and it's had a client referral base of about
01:34100 where they're seeing women come in and receive the wraparound support services they
01:39need. On Monday they will officially open their doors to all of the women in the Illawarra
01:45and they believe in some three or four years they could be servicing as many as 600 women
01:50through the centre. They hope that this centre is a blueprint for centres around regional
01:57Australia.