Hi, my name's Megan, Kia ora my name is Maria, and this is the Insider's Guide to Women's Refuge.
One of the myths is that Women's Refuge is just safe housing and it's not, it's much more than that. It's community advocacy where we support women staying in their own homes. Violence isn't just about the physical side of things. In fact, you may not be experiencing physical violence at all, but you may be experiencing coercive control and isolation.
That is violence also. You don't have to talk to the police to access our services. However, if you wish to talk to the police about what's been happening to you, we will absolutely support you to do that. You do not have to have left your partner before you contact us. The only criteria is that you feel you're experiencing domestic violence or you may be experiencing domestic violence.
Anybody who's female, transgender, non-binary, regardless of who your partner is, we're ready to support anybody. Financial hardship is quite prevalent in New Zealand within domestic violence, where perhaps the abusive partner is taking money away from families, children in particular. We can support you with that by talking to Work and Income, getting you on the right benefit or getting you the support that you need and helping you to manage your own finances and separate finances from the abusive partner if necessary.
The initial phone call, you're only committing to that phone call if you wish. You can end that phone call whenever you like. You don't have to call us back. But if you want our services, we're ready to listen to you to put together a support system that supports you in the best way possible for you. We offer advocacy, residential, and community, so residential where women are obviously in our safe houses, and we're supporting them through advocacy through the courts, for example, with protection orders, parenting orders and community with supporting them with tools to keep themselves safe, with advocacy, with government departments, agencies, Kāinga Ora, Work and Income.
A safe house is, a general home, like everybody lives in, the bedrooms tend to be a little bit bigger than normal, maybe. Living areas arecommunal areas for everybody. You may be in the safe house with other families. The majority of the safe houses we have in Aotearoa do have security systems set up.
And in some situations we do have security guards. You don't need to have anything to come into a safe house. We can provide everything for you. We won't put you into a safe house unless that's what you're asking for. But we will talk to you about the level of risk that we perceive you're at and discuss with you what your options are.
You make the choice. You make all of the decisions that impact your life from there on in. There is no requirement for you to pay within the safe house. We don't want to put anybody into financial hardship. All of our offices have spaces available for children set up for children, and we love kids. So bring them with you.
A lot of our Refuges do deliver tamariki programs so that there's always a tamariki room, a children's room for them to just go in there and relax with another kaimahi. Or if they've got a child advocate working at the Refuge, they will look after the children while mum is talking to the Women's advocate. We don't share information with anybody unless we have your permission to do so.
Unless of course, there's a situation where we're very concerned for your safety or for the safety of your children. Everything begins with us listening, and the easiest way for us to do that is for you to call 0800 Refuge, or look for your local Refuge number online or through the Women's Refuge website.
PG
Description
Women's Refuge is New Zealand's largest national organisation dedicated to supporting women and children experiencing family violence. This video explains who they are, what they do and how to access their services.
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12 Jan 2026
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