Christchurch Women's Refuge is a dedicated Canterbury charity.
The work we began here in 1973 started the New Zealand refuge movement. Since then we have supported approximately 12,000 Canterbury women and children to become, and stay, safe from family violence.
We are available to support families anywhere in New Zealand, but our ‘catchment’ is Christchurch, North Canterbury, Selwyn and Banks Peninsula districts – approximately 436,000 people.
We have 12 full-time and four part-time staff who together support over 1,000 clients per year.
We specialise in early intervention services that are designed to stop the cycle of family violence.
We have a strong focus on children and holistic family services and offer education programmes for children separately from women, in recognition of their different needs and experiences. Our group and individual programmes for women and our children's group programmes are all approved by the Ministry of Justice.
Our social services staff offer support, advocacy, assistance with accessing essential services (e.g. financial, legal, health, housing etc) and professional referrals.
We also run a free 24-hour crisis and support line available throughout New Zealand and provide emergency residential services for up to 16 women and children at a time in our Safe House.
We help women to confront the abuse in their lives and plan for a better future.
We support them in recognising changes they need to make to achieve this and we help them access practical support
We help break the cycle of violence in which children can adopt the behaviours they have witnessed or experienced
We support children to feel safe, to understand acceptable behaviour and to beileve in a postive, safe future.
We help strengthen other agencies, government services and sectors of the community to understand and refuse to tolerate family violence.
We work to educate the wider community on the issues and effects of family violence