One aspect of the growing awareness in the community of the terrible costs and impacts of domestic and family violence is its impact on homelessness. Specialist Homelessness Services (SHS) assist people who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, homelessness.
In 2015–16, SHS recorded 105,619 clients that needed help because they had experienced domestic and family violence. This number accounted for for 37.8 per cent of all SHS clients in that year, an increase of over 4 percentage points from 33.7 per cent in 2011–12. In addition, in 2015–16 women aged 18+ escaping domestic violence accounted for nearly a quarter (22.5%) of all SHS clients.
Of those SHS clients recorded as escaping domestic and family violence, 62,751 (or 59.4%) were women aged 18 and older, 36,361 (34.4%) were children aged 17 years and younger and 6,506 (or 6.2%) were men aged 18 and older.
Figure 1: The impact of domestic and family violence on homelessness
