The Women’s Resilience Centre will provide medium-term accommodation for 3 to 12 months for women and their children who need a roof over their heads, after-crises care or hospital stays.
The Resilience Program draws on evidence-based modalities such as Cognitive Therapy (CT) and Mindfulness Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (MCBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) and Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT).
The Program is trauma-informed, solutions-focused and evidence-based. The clinical aspects will be based on Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) and Schema Therapy (ST).
Included will be practical life-skills courses; money management and budgeting, work readiness skills and life-based education day sessions.
There will also be optional post-discharge relapse prevention via structured mentoring and peer-support programs for women as they reset their lives and
re-enter society.
Research in this area suggests that relapse prevention programs, such as booster sessions, social support and mentoring, are effective in the maintenance of treatment gains and will ultimately help individuals stay away from their abusers.
peer
Participants will be invited to partner with a peer ‘mentor’ who will act in the capacity of a sponsor for them during and after treatment. Women will be paired based upon common interests, experiences and values. Matching survivor mentors to mentees enables the sharing of learnings, experience, strength, and hope, and will support program participants to move forwards with agency and self-esteem. The peer mentor offers positive guidance and assurance for women and these relationships often outlast the program itself. To be a mentor you will need to have demonstrated a healthy survivor recovery, with support around you, and a desire to give back and help another person along their journey. To be a mentee you simply must have the desire to listen, learn and grow. Participants
Community
Participants will also be engaged in a program of integrated support where they will have regular time with a dedicated professional who can advise and support on life decisions such as engaging legal or financial aid, exploring housing options, and similar. There will be regular opportunities to connect with other participants at a community level to learn from and support each other. Often much of the learning comes from outside the program sessions as much as it does from within them. Why? These women are no longer isolated and confined in domestic abuse situations and the community itself can provide critical and meaningful support.
The program will be offered to both residents and non-residents. Participants will have the opportunity to attend a variety of classes, group or individual sessions that focus on work readiness. Specific skills will be introduced to ensure that participants have the requisite academic, critical thinking and personal skills necessary to acquire and maintain employment.
A life skills component will focus on key issues such as financial management, self-awareness, critical and creative thinking, problem solving, interpersonal skills such as effective communication, and self-care skills such as stress management.
These skills also provide an essential stepping stone towards sustained recovery after the trauma of family violence and abuse, and will help individuals build the life that they want for themselves away from their abusers.day
The schedule for a typical day program will vary for each individual and their needs and also is specific to their program recommendations, however the following schedule offers a snapshot of what the daily content and structure may look like.
Morning meditation
and mindfulness followed
by community time and peer review.
One to one or group
sessions which are trauma informed and
resilience focused.
Afternoon psycho-educational content and life experience sessions including time with social worker.
Mentor sessions,
community CODA
visitation, and time for self reflection.
The Women’s Resilience Centre will be a place of hope, healing, and recovery for women from all walks of life who have experienced domestic abuse, trauma and violence.
The outcomes-focused program, the 1st of its kind in Australia, will change the legacies of women who come there to continue their healing and recovery post time in a refuge or shelter.
Therapeutic programs and care will be available to all women who need recovery from domestic abuse and violence. The Centre will be a safe place for these women to work on their trauma and experiences to secure sustainable resilient long-term recovery and reset their lives for themselves and their children.
The evidence-based program will deliver a combination of life skills to women including resilience, purpose, trauma resolution, rebuilding self-esteem and giving them back agency for their decisions and future. The program will be delivered by compassionate and kind professionals via a reliable and consistent model of care.
After immediate crisis interventions, women find themselves to be very vulnerable and without ongoing recovery service options. Sadly, the reality is that many of them return to the very same unsafe relationships and environments. This is the cycle that our program wishes to break, the ripples of which will spread far further than just these women and their children but also beyond into wider communities.
Women currently have options to seek refuge and safety from ongoing harm and abuse in shelters around Australia but, until now, there has never been a place available for these women to continue to work on themselves for the longer-term and to truly recover from the vicious cycle of abuse they and their children have received, often over many years.
Our effectual and clinically-evidenced programs are designed to enable these women to be resilient post treatment and to enjoy sustainable and holistic recovery.
Content is being designed and written by clinical psychologists, therapists and other professionals who have extensive experience in trauma-informed work and domestic abuse encompassing DBT, CBT and other models of care.