Women's Refuges Show 11.6% Increase

Women's Refuge has announced a 11.6% increase in the number of women and children seeking safe accommodation in the year ending June 2011. 

"Every night of our last financial year an average of 230 women and children stayed in one of our 45 refuge safe houses," says Women's Refuge Chief Executive Heather Henare.  This is up nearly 12% on last year.  The women and children also needed to stay longer.  The average stay for a woman was 23 days which was a three day increase from the year before."

Of the 25,000 women and children that used refuge services last year, nearly 30% of women got in touch with Refuge directly or via a crisis call.  Police referred nearly half of the women Refuge provides services for. 

You can read more about this via the Women's Refuge website here. 

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