Canberra's women's refuges have more funding security in this month's ACT budget but will still struggle to meet demand, five years after they were "devastated" by cuts to the sector.
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As part of a $1.2 million injection to specialist homelessness services across the territory, Beryl, Doris and Toora will each receive an additional $100,000 a year on top of their existing funding.
Karinya House, which offers shelter to pregnant women and those with babies, will also get an extra $80,000 a year to fund three additional places, as requests for beds surge.
But manager of Beryl Women Robyn Martin said the extra cash still fell short of what Beryl had been calling for to stay afloat, after deep cuts in 2013 saw a number of specialist services in the ACT close their doors and staff numbers shrink.
"It's nothing to turn your nose up at, but it's a little disappointing," Ms Martin said.
At Beryl, the extra sum will match what the refuge had previously received in one-off-grants for a second child support worker.
"This will give us more certainty about that, it will mean we can keep that children's program going, but we still need another women's worker," Ms Martin said.
The service supports about 150 women and children a year, but, with limited beds and just five permanent staff, Beryl is regularly forced to turn people in need away. This week, Ms Martin said they were spread even more thinly than usual, as two workers took unexpected leave due to personal circumstances.
"I can never approve two people to go on planned leave at the same time, everything we do [is] a juggling act," Ms Martin said.
The refuge is funded under the homelessness portfolio and so does not receive any funding from the $30 annual Family Safety levy introduced in 2016.
Much of that revenue had been thrown into the development of the newly launched Family Safety Hub, an ACT government spokeswoman confirmed. In this year's budget, $1.5 million will fund a team of about four workers and kick off a number of trial projects for the hub, starting with early intervention programs for pregnant women and new families, a group found to be especially at risk of violence.
An additional boost to the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre and Domestic Violence Crisis Service will also provide for three extra counsellors to offer frontline support to women and children experiencing violence.
More than $800,000 in the coming year will also go towards the creation of two new homelessness services to target case management and accommodation to older women sleeping rough as well as migrant families and asylum seekers in crisis. About 36 new beds are expected to be created in the next four years for women and families seeking shelter.
More money has also been thrown behind improving the adoption process at Child and Youth Protection Services and a special emergency fund for those slipping through the cracks in the National Disability Insurance Scheme will be funded for the next two years.
Will Mollison of Families ACT welcomed the extra funding for frontline services but expressed disappointment that the "community is still waiting for a fully-funded solution to the territory’s housing affordability and homelessness crisis".
