Refuge handover worries family groups

Plans to hand over North Shore's Women Refuge to Auckland-based Preventing Violence in the Home have upset Shore-based family violence agencies because the new owners have never run a refuge before.

The Safer Families Foundation, which has run the North Shore refuge since 2004, says it will wind up and hand over its assets to Preventing Violence in the Home (PVH) from mid-July because it needs to expand but does not have the infrastructure to do so.

Athina Tsoulis, a Ponsonby film-maker who has chaired the foundation from its inception, said there was no funding "crisis" but the board needed to prepare for the future.

But Carol Ryan of social service agency Raeburn House, speaking for 16 people from concerned agencies who met on Wednesday night, said that although PVH had years of experience with victims of domestic violence, it had never run a refuge.

"We want to work collaboratively with them but it's all the questions. It's being in the dark," she said. "We have worked very closely with Safer Families and with the family violence prevention network, so if we're going to have this model on the Shore we need to know how this links in with us."

She has been delegated to write to the boards of Safer Families and PVH seeking a meeting to explain the plan.

But Ms Tsoulis said Safer Families and PVH would be available to answer questions at the next regular meeting of the North Shore family violence prevention network next Thursday.

She said circumstances had changed since the foundation was set up. Its refuge, which is rented from Housing New Zealand, had not been full until it was opened up to women from outside the Shore four or five months ago, and its long-term respite house, which was bought through local fundraising, was no longer operating.

"Fewer women are coming into the refuge, which is great because intervention services are doing the trick," she said.

"There is a lot more awareness in the community so friends and family are more likely to support them, and we have good advocacy services working with the police and with CYFS [Child, Youth and Family Services], which means that women are more willing, and have the support, to leave early.

"That's what we always wanted. We didn't want to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff."

She said PVH would have the management and staff resources to reopen the respite house for women from both sides of the harbour.

Two members of the Safer Families board will join the PVH board to safeguard North Shore interests.