Canberra's domestic violence support workers fielded nearly 50 crisis calls a day as requests for help peaked over the summer holiday period.
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And support staff at the ACT's Domestic Violence Crisis Service have braced themselves for February, which is traditionally the organisation's busiest month.
Executive director Mirjana Wilson said there had already been a jump in demand for support services in December and January, but the service's four-month "peak season" began in November.
"It's that building up of what's going to happen when we get the family all together for Christmas? Can we afford to buy everything we need to get? Will we get away on holidays? And the kids are home from school so how will we handle that if there's violence in the home?
"So there's the stress of holding it all together.
"Then they've got to get kids back to school, they've got to get everything together to get back to work and that's when things can start to unravel."
The service fielded nearly 1500 calls for support and helped more than 160 families in crisis in February last year.
Workers have received 2,529 calls for support and helped in 213 crisis interventions with families and police since the start of December.
They also helped 84 women to apply for court protection orders against violent partners.
Those figures were slightly up on the same period last year, when staff fielded 2120 crisis calls and carried out 212 crisis interventions after being called by police.
Extra calls for help also exhausted emergency housing supplies which were already boosted to cater to increased demand in the ACT over the festive period.
The ACT Government provided seven extra motel rooms for at-risk women escaping violence through its Emergency Christmas Housing initiative.
Ms Wilson said 15 women and 11 children requested a combined 94 nights of emergency accommodation over Christmas.
Clients who sought help for domestic violence during the holidays included 16 women who were non-permanent residents and eight women with a disability.
"Some of the situations were people who who the violence was so bad they had to leave and go into the Emergency Christmas Housing Program, but then there have also been situations where people have been charged," Ms Wilson said.
Ms Wilson encouraged victims of domestic violence to reach out for formal or informal support if they felt pressures around the start of the year had gotten too great.
"If they feel themselves tipping to a point where they can't cope, they need to reach out, they need a circuit breaker."
Ms Wilson said growing numbers of women seeking help for domestic violence meant staff had to triage and prioritise clients, which often meant they were only able to support families in crisis.
She said it was vital that greater awareness around the issue nationally was accompanied by funding for support services that could cope with demand.
The ACT's Domestic Violence Crisis Service dealt with 15,644 calls to its crisis line in 2013-14, up from 13,959 the previous year, and provided direct intervention for 1408 people, up from 1096 in 2012-13.
Last year a jump in reports of domestic violence bucked a decade-long downward trend in crime across the ACT and put pressure on police and social workers to provide enough support for victims.
Those pressures were further brought into the light when a Senate Inquiry heard Canberra staff struggled to provide adequate long-term help to a skyrocketing number of women and children who had sought help in domestic violence situations.