Lismore Women's Resource Centre, like many local organisations, lost one of its premises during the February floods. Their South Lismore property went completely under, and the residents had to be rescued from top-story windows and the roof.

Staff were all flooded in for the first 10 days and when they could, they reopened their doors within days, with a safe space for women to come and drop in, take a shower, charge their device, talk to someone, see a special Women's GP or nurse, or just sit in a quiet space for a while.

When they realised the needs of women just weren't being met this way, even after they advocated for the Recovery Centre Shuttle to stop outside the hospital so women displaced in evacuation centres could access their service and health services, the team began outreach services.

This outreach service has grown in need, and with some preliminary funding coming in, the service has now been able to extend its program, to offer a flood recovery outreach service for 3 years, which will support not only Women in Lismore but those further down and up river, who have been affected and need support as well.

This will be community-led, with the needs expressed being what the program works towards supported through made-to-fit Case Management, offering continuity of care, specialist and trauma-informed care and reducing barriers to access through regular visits to key community areas.

As Kelly, NORWACS General Manager says "We are a small organisation, that makes a big impact", and we have seen a 78% increase in access requests to our Heartfelt House-Childhood sexual Abuse Recovery Service, with over 100% increase in Domestic Violence related support needs, and this increase, has been across the state, where other Women's Centre managers confirm they are also inundated with so many women needing support, but with so little funding, staffing and capacity, a lot of women in need are being turned away".

"Women's Centre's haven't received a pay increase in 26 years. This means that our service offering is affected, we have reduced hours, less staff and less capacity to support women to get the help they need, before it becomes critical. We know the best time to support a woman is when she first decides to seek support, not after hospitalisation or critical injury, homelessness or crisis, because that is much further down the path of trauma recovery and results in more challenges to reaching better health and recovery outcomes".

"We need adequate funding and a premises, that is ours in perpetuity that we as women can create a safe space in that is consistent and able to support this early support access".

"What we noticed during this disaster and subsequent recovery, is that women tend to be the primary caregivers, and this doesn't stop or change when a crisis occurs, what tends to happen is the people they support tend to have higher needs, while the women in caring roles have less support."

"They usually put others before themselves, and this may extend outside their own family and direct network, it often will extend out to the community. This is why we are creating this new service, so Women don't get left behind."

"We have seen women experiencing overwhelm and burnout, from challenges, filling out forms, or feeling survivor guilt and being unable to ask for or accept the help they need, or just being so busy they can't get to us, it's only been in the past week that we have seen a sudden upsurge in drop-in's, while we are still maintaining the outreach we are doing as well."

This is why Kelly and her team are developing this outreach program, the Women's Safe Space mobile Service in order to make sure Women can access the support they need as early as possible, with consistency of care.

Whilst it is still in development, women can access the Lismore Women's Health and Resource centre Monday to Thursday, 9am - 12:30pm and then again from 1:30pm - 4pm.

The Centre is located next to Lismore Base Hospital's Emergency Department, at 60 Uralba St, Lismore.