Jenny Holmes was a teenager and pregnant with her son, Joshua, when facing a lengthy prison sentence. Almost forty years later, she gives mums leaving prison a place to sleep. As the Program Manager for From Now, a specialist homelessness service run by the Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre in Redfern, Holmes has many responsibilities. But the most telling act – the one that underscores the heart she brings to this work – involves pillows.

When Holmes sets up rooms for women re-entering society, she takes her time. These spaces are furnished with character, flourish and, always, decorative pillows and a quilt. These thoughtful adornments send a message to women like her younger self. Women she says are still treated as “the community’s dirty little secret’. 

The message is: someone cares about you. 

“I want it to have personal touches. I want the quilt to have colour and character, the cushions on the bed to have meaning. I want that respect to be shown [and say] that you deserve to be treated with respect and care – not just put into an emergency situation.”

Holmes shared her thoughts on FW’s podcast There’s No Place Like Home: Paths to Healing, in a panel discussing how safe, secure housing strengthens a domestic abuse victim-survivor’s ability to properly heal. “Housing underpins everything that a woman [escaping domestic abuse] faces,” she said.

A 2022 report found that 90,000 women in Australia remained in a violent relationship because they couldn’t  afford to leave. Another 82,000 left then returned because they couldn’t afford to live elsewhere. As the nation grapples with a broader housing shortage and affordability crisis, Holmes lamented an even bleaker situation for survivors leaving incarceration. 

“Thirty percent of women go into prison homeless. Fifty percent come out homeless. They’re being incarcerated, then not given bail because they don’t have a home anymore. What we’re finding is that so many women are not taken into [specialist homelessness services] because they’re seen as too high risk.” 

While From Now doesn’t explicitly support victim-survivors of domestic violence, Holmes has seen an undeniable overlap.

“The intergenerational trauma that persists in our systems is horrendous. We’re about breaking those bonds.”

“Every single woman we have worked with has experienced domestic and family violence. Ninety percent have faced childhood sexual assault,” she said.

“All links are traced back to family and domestic violence, either with their partner or they’ve grown up in a household that has experienced that. What they have experienced through their whole life is all tied up with domestic violence.” 

This is not the only trend that Holmes – a Darug and Dharawal woman – has noticed. Seventy-five percent of the women the program has supported are also Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 20 to 22 times more likely to go to prison than non-Indigenous women. That tells me that the colonisation that has happened in our country, and the intergenerational trauma that still persists in our systems, is just horrendous. But we’re about breaking those bonds.” 

And breaking them, she is. From Now has achieved remarkable results in its first 18 months. Every woman who entered the program with an open Department of Communities and Justice case retained custody of her child. Every woman in the program completed training on the impacts of domestic abuse and family violence on themselves and their children. Not a single one has returned to prison.

While Holmes will continue to do her work – which is funded for five years by the Judith Neilsen Institute – she knows a larger solution is out of her hands. 

“It has to be sustainable, long-term housing. Without housing I feel like our industry is banging on a wall that is just futile. We could do much with [enough] housing.” 

The facts about domestic abuse and housing:

• Family and domestic violence (FDV) is the main reason women and children leave their homes in Australia (AHURI 2021). 
• Many women and children leaving their homes may experience housing insecurity, and in some cases, homelessness (Fitz-Gibbon et al. 2022). 
• For this reason, women and children affected by FDV are a national homelessness priority group in the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA), which came into effect on 1 July 2018 (CFFR 2019). 
• The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 identified housing as a priority response area (DSS 2022). Safety at home can also be a concern for people who have experienced sexual violence outside of the family, for example if the perpetrator lives nearby, or knows where they live.