Apogae Production.
Hi, my name's Beck Woodbine and welcome to Tenderness for Nurses.
I'm grateful for the person that I have the opportunity to be, so I hit it and parked it for Nelly four years. We always have free will, we always get to choose. We are autonomous.
Welcome to Teninists for Nurses. I'm Beck your host, and I have the wonderful Victoria Parker, who is the CEO of the Lady Musgrave Trust with me today. Just a little bit of info about the Lady Musgrave Trust. It is Queensland's oldest charity and they do a lot of work for women within the DV housing space, which we know if you've listened to a couple of my podcasts ago, what a huge issue housing is. But they're all about
providing practical solutions that help women save lives. They also help transition women that are at They help them get jobs and also to assimilate them from needing a house to actually being in their own rental home or home or whatever transpires for them. So thank you so much for taking the time, Victoria to come and chat with me.
My pleasure. That's a great summary of what we do.
I did my research. How about you fill us in in your own words about what the Lady must Grave Trust does and who it helps and how it helps.
So, as you say, with Queensland's oldest charity, this year is our one hundred and fortieth anniversary and it's essentially the birthday we wish we never had to have because by the very fact that we're still operating means that we're still in business and as you just mentioned, the reason why we're around has never been more necessary. And so in fact business is booming, which is something we
don't want to have from the interm profits space. So the Lady must Grave Trust we provide housing solutions to young women and children who were experiencing or at risk of homelessness. We started in eighteen eighty five and way back then. The reason why we started is that the big boats that were coming across from Europe to settle in Australia. They landed in the immigration port in Brisbane, which is just under Queen's Wharf where Queen's Wolf is now, and
these young women were of service on the boats. When they arrived in Brisbane, they got off the boat and essentially they were unemployed and homeless, and the government of the day didn't see that as being an issue, but Lady Musgrave did. She was the wife of one of the first governors of Queensland, so she was quite a progressive woman that in the day she had been living with her husband all across the world, and so she
saw this as being an issue. So she gathered up these young women and she put them into a safe place to live. But not only did she recognize the value of a safe place to live, but she also identified that the two key leavers out of disadvantage and poverty looking at employment and education opportunities. So she connected these young women to services and skills they could then
become financially independent in their own right. So those are the foundations for the Lady musk Grave Trust still today. But the reason why we have so many young women and their children looking for a place to live is because of domestic and family violence. That is the scourg that we are facing today and one hundred percent of the women that we support have been impacted by violence.
It's one to one, So there's no doubt that that's a leading precursor for young women needing a safe place to live.
So is there an age limit that you look after.
Yeah, so we have because we're a trust, a charitable organization, we have objects and those objects are legally binding to the operations of our organization, and we only have a few. One is that we support young women, and so we're interpreting that is under the age of thirty. Also, these women need to be experiencing or at risk of homelessness. And we also because we're a transitional housing service, which
means that we're not an emergency or a refuge. So that means that women move into our properties, they get a lease in their name, which is really powerful for a young woman to absolutely have the lease in their name and have the opportunity to get a positive rental record. So this is transitional. So they live with us in our properties for twelve months or eighteen months as required, and the viewers that they're then transitioning to long term housing.
So that's really the framework of which we offer. But then when women move into our properties, we as an organization do whatever we can within our power to support these young women to identify their goals and then work towards them.
How do the women get in touch with your organization with your trust.
We are a very small organization and we're purposefully staying small and in order to deliver our service, we partner with excellent organizations that are really good at what they do, and we understand that for young women who are experiencing trauma and at risk, our trust is a really big thing and so quite often it's hard to form those relationships and we don't want to have to duplicate and ask women to form relationships with us unnecessarily, so we
encourage referrals through our partner organizations, which are community services located throughout Queensland, and they refer into us when we have a vacancy. So we have a very small portfolio of properties. We don't receive any recurrent government funding. So for the entirety of our history, we have only been alive and possible because of support from the community and corporate organizations and like minded philanthropic funds. And again I
like that. I think it's important again for us to provide a service to the community and fill that gap between what community needs and how government responds. We then prove up what works and we make available to government that evidence to form their program and funding decisions.
Is it mainly in your experience certain economic groups that are more impacted than others, or do you find it's just now across the board.
So certainly, domestic and family of violence is everywhere. It does not discriminate with age or socioeconomic, or education or ethnic. But we do know it affects those who are disadvantaged, who those who live in hardship and in poverty much worse. We know it is more common in those communities and there are reasons for that. Some of those reasons are that it's intergenerational, so families that grow up in violence
then create families which have violence occurring. We also know that when there aren't support networks wrapped around someone, then their likelihood to be affected by domestican family violence in an ongoing way is increased. We also know educations are really key thing, yes, particularly when domestican family violence sometimes is not obvious. And that's getting into the area of conversive control where it's really subtle and it's really personalized
to the relationship between the man and the woman. And I'm saying man and woman because it is a gendered issue. Most prominently, violence occurs in every relationship, but the domestican family violence that the lady must grave trust responds to is the violence that is that woman experience and that results in them needing a safe place to live.
It's funny. I've always said to my daughter and to my son's partner, you girls have your own bank accounts. You make sure you're always financially independent. And you know I'm saying this to my son's partner, but it doesn't matter. They have to have that financial independence whether you're in a relationship or not.
And it gives a choice.
Yeah, And they look at me and they go, oh.
No, it's really important, so important. I mean so many situations where financial abuse is rampant. One of our tenants, a young twenty three year old woman, was sharing with me her story and it just really struck me how sophisticated some of this financial abuse can be. In that her boyfriend was somehow learned that he could transfer money in and out of her account to the point where the bank thought something was shady and shut down her account.
He had all of her id so that she wasn't able to then set up in another account, and he then inserted an iPod airtracker into the sole of her shoes so that he could track her. So this level of sophistication meant that she was then unable to go to a refuge because she had been tracked and it would put other residents at risk. And it was really only when she was bushwalking with a friend that she discovered that this tracker was happening. She kept seeing the
alert come up. She wasn't sure it was about until her friend said, what is that? Why is it coming up with my phone? So the lens that people go to in order to control women is frightening. And so when I say education, it's not just formal education, but it's also an awareness of what the red flags of an unhealthy relationship are. And again they're different, they're different
for every relationship. But you can say that there's jealousy, love bombing, so that fast tracking of a relationship and so much love and so many gifts, and then was holding it if you're not doing and performing as you should in the eyes of your partner. Isolation and estrangement from family and friends, Data control, control over your social media accounts, telling you what to wear, what you should do.
All of those are examples of controlling behavior. Not all of the meaning that it's an unhealthy relationship, but they are all things to consider. Whereas the green flags of healthy relationships, they're pretty consistent and ability to communicate, an ability to own in one's own position in the relationship, financial independence, trust, trust, and I'm not an expert in
domestic violence. In terms of the work that I do, we are more on the side of housing, but I know a little bit because of the women that we support. But I'm more focused on the housing that we provide because I do know that one of the best things that can be made available to Queensland and Australian women is the chance and the choice to go somewhere safe
if they're unsafe in their current home. And unfortunately Queensland and Australia they don't offer enough and so more than not, women are having to stay in the situation they're in, or they are considering homelessness as a better option.
If someone wanted to, you know, they get in touch with an agency. They're very concerned about, you know, their welfare. I know a lot of women have in the past, and I'm not bagging the police or anything like that, but you know, have presented and being turned away and where where do they go if they're really scared? I mean, what do they do with you talking to the women that you have spoken to and helped? Do they just go up in a car and sleep rough in the car?
And I'm sure do? I mean absolutely. The first advice is if you're not, if you're in an unsafe situation, called the police. Without a doubt, call the police. On a note on Queensland Police Service, they are doing credible work in improving understanding in their response to domestican family of violence. The unfortunate thing is that they're underresourced, Like the demand is enormous.
And imagine the vicarious trauma those guys are facing all the time, you know, showing up to you know, some of the scenes would be horrendous that they see.
Yeah, yeah, And I think on average I was reading just this morning in the article that you and I were talking about earlier, each domestican family of violence incident they respond to averages about four to six hours. And just the other day in Logan there were one hundred underresourced calls that the police could not respond to.
How do we change this? What is happening in our society? That is it? The levels of stress. Is it financial problems? Is it I know, social media? Is it past trauma? Is it intergenerational trauma? I mean I remember some things as a kid growing up, but as in not in my family, but you know, friends at school. To me, it seems maybe I'm more aware, but it seems to be a real problem.
Oh, there's no doubt it's a real problem. And I think it's everything that you said. I think there is definitely an increased awareness of what domestic family of violence is, and there is an increased ability for women to power for them to ask for help. I think there is definitely an increase in women asking for help. I think they're an increase in services. But from what I see on the street and what I hear from our partners, the demand is greater than the services available and the
funding available. And I think it's everything that you mentioned. I think it is definitely increased hardship where times are tough right now for everyone. I think definitely that impacts impacts more significantly in people's views and their ability to manage and regulate their own emotions and violence being a solution.
And you've got the stuff on TV, but I mean violence is everywhere you look at the games the people play and the young kids, they're so violence some of those games and some of them what they do to women in those games is horrendous.
And there are influences that are making enormous amounts of money on the back of encouraging men to have unhealthy relationships with women. And then you think about porn that it perpetuates these really unhealthy, unsatisfying, unrealistic situations. But the solution is twofold I reckon. The solution is absolutely increasing targeted, high quality support, making sure that there are safe places for women to go to when they need to. But
also it's working with our young people. It's interrupting and preventing that continuum of unhealthiness that then leads through to violence. We do a lot of work with Small Steps for Hannah, which is an incredible organization, the work that Lloyd and Sue have done, and they're bravery encouraged, but there are solutions and the work that Small Steps for Hannah are doing. They've changed legislation, which is phenomenal, They've increased awareness amongst
our community. But what they're really doing so powerfully is they're developing an educational program that is going into schools and workplaces to change the cultural understanding about what is healthy masculinity. Particularly, So there's this amazing legend called Dave Kramer, who should absolutely be sitting in the seat in a
future episode. And he's developed this program called Holt, and he speaks so powerfully around what healthy masculinity looks like and the work that he does in talking to young boys, particularly in schools and workplaces, and his view and I'm just repeating what he says because it really struck with me, is that there's this continuum of unhealthiness when it comes to toxic masculinity or unhealthy masculinity, and it starts at one end, which seemingly might be harmless, which is, you know,
sexist jokes, wolf whistles. That's at one end. The other end is violence and murder and rape. And while not everyone who will whistles or says a sexist joke will become a murderer, absolutely one hundred percent of the murderers started at the other end, where they had an unhealthy idea of a woman in a very seemingly in a
vanilla sense. But you can, actually you can intercept the murderers and the rapists and the violent perpetrators right down here in the early days before it gets more serious, and ultimately, hopefully then once those young people have a better understanding or a more healthy understanding about masculinity and relationships with women, that they then have families and then continue that healthy situation in their own family.
I remember one time I was pretty strict with what the kids watched on the computers. And you know, if they shut the computer, they had to reopen it up for me to have a look like I was. You know, I was paying for it. I had, and they weren't eighteen, so I had every right to have a look at what I needed to have a look at. And I remember one day when Jake was younger and be horrified. I'm going to tell the story, but I said to him,
have you seen any pawn? And where he saw the first time was on the school bus school bus with all the school boys, because.
He went to place right on your way to school.
And it was at that point I sat him down and I said, sweetheart, you realize what you're seeing is just all show. I said, that is not what a loving relationship is about. And because of the nature of my work and my clients and patients coming in and what they tell me that have been on the apps
and gone out on these random dates or whatever. There is this idea that normal sex, and this is coming from women that are client to mine, is someone holding their neck anal sex on the first date that they think that's the north average, that they think that every female has this perfect, tiny little vagina. Things that are just completely wrong.
Yeah, I know.
And so I had to have this conversation with him that and he was mortified. But I'll be damned if I wasn't going to have my son be a respectful young man because they just not on your not on my watch. And you know, he's got the most beautiful partner. He is the most loving son and partner to Lily. And you know, even though they were really hard conversations when he was younger and both of us were uncomfortable, I'm so pleased I did.
Yeah, it sounds like you and I had almost the same conversation with our son, Is that right, Yeah, so I said the same. I said, you do know that that's not real, and you do know that those women are not enjoying it, And he's like, of course, well I know that I know that, and now he is in a beautiful relationship.
With a lily as well. I was right, Oh my god, But I mean, did you feel uncomfortable in that moment?
But I could not walk past it.
No, I couldn't either.
I could not walk past it.
I did.
I had to. I had to bring it up in the work that I do, even without the work that we do, the fact that we are women and we it is our responsibility, but it's everyone's responsibility. But I feel extra responsible for raising a sun and wanting to make sure that I do everything I can. He's always got free will I do everything I have every give him everything that is possible for him to have the tools to make the right decisions in our community.
Yeah, wonderful.
Yeah, that's it. That's all I can do. I can't control him, but I can control what I make available for him to then use as an adult.
And it's not easy doing that, and it's not easy asking those questions because I remember my sister once walked in on her son and he had and that was in the days where you could put something in and next thing you were on a completely horrendous website like this is like fifteen twenty years ago, and she walked in and here he was looking at one of those websites, and she had a heart attack and switched it off.
And his words to her, and it's always stayed with me is, oh, thank god you did that, because you said I couldn't shut it off.
Couldn't couldn't. Actually he couldn't.
Brain, his brain couldn't shut off.
So that I've read a bit about it, and again this is outside of my scope of what I do professionally, but I'm really interested in the brain. It's fascinating. I know, read a lot of books and I followed a lot of people around plasticity of the brain and how the
brain works. And from what I understand, pawn activates that part of your brain that is like it's a dopamine response, and you become addicted to it quite quickly, and you get used to what you're watching quite quickly, so you always need to up the ante, and so you're constantly looking for more and more intense or porn or stimulation stimulus.
And so you can imagine how that then impacts your own sexual relationship with your partner absolutely, And I can't imagine how it would feel to be trapped in that, like as a man or a woman having a porn addiction would be just torturous and you know the level of shame and the self disgusted, but you just can't stop and you keep get looking at worse and worse and worse. It would just be it's.
Like any addiction. Yeah, it's like, you know, one bottle is not enough, you then go to two. It's like, you know, this particular drugs not enough, You've got to up it. It's the same with gambling, same with porn. You know, anything that hits that dopamine response and gets to you feeling great, but it just youah to have more and more and more. And that's why it's so destructive.
And we're being manipulated to do that. That's the other thing. There are entities and individuals who.
Are making a lot of money on that. Yeah, it's horrific, really, it's terrible. And it's just so easily accessible. Yeah, and if it's so easily accessible, then you know people that already have self control problems, I mean, that's going to feed into their problems totally.
And again that's with the brain. So we know that the brain develops from an early age, and so they're all the things like self regulation and expression and connection and attachment are all developed in the first eight years of your life, and so if you're not exposed to those environments, those positive environments, then you don't have those aspects in your brain that are developed, and so then you're far more susceptible to those stimulations and stimulus down
the track. So essentially, then we're having adults whose brains have not developed in a healthy way, then being exposed to stimulation and reacting in ways that aren't moderated, aren't moderates, but are quite reasonable considering from where they've come from. And then they then create families, and because they have not been modeled out of a parent, they then parent and
unhealthy ways and it just continues. So the work of the trust this route routing around there is that we love working with young women and their children because it's our opportunity to support both women and child and we see it as an amazing opportunity while they're living in our properties to interrupt the cycle of disadvantage for mum
and focus on the potential of their baby. And so we look to support mum and provide her with all of the information and an assistance that she wants to develop life skills and heal from her past trauma, engage with her baby in healthy ways, and also then we look to the developmental opportunities for that child.
So what do you offer for them to move through their trauma? Is it? Do you then put them in touch with another service like a counseling service? I mean, how do you deal with the trauma?
Yes, so our preferred way of offering support is called individualized case management support, where the support management plan is individualized to that person.
But that's something organized by you guys.
No. So again for us, we are tiny and we keep ourselves tiny, and we partner with commercial relationships with organizations that are excellent at what they do and operating in the geographic location that we have housing. So we focus on providing the house and the environment for this woman to this young family to live in, and then we engage with this service organization who has an existing relationship with that tenant to wrap around them and provide
the support they need. So we've got ten properties across southeast Queensland that provide just about eight thousand nights of safety per year. But the piece to the resistance of the work that we've been doing over the last couple of years is a project down in Logan. So we were very lucky to be donated a large block of land in Logan.
How wonderful.
And then we've partnered with the construction and the development sector who have wrapped around us and designed up using the architect Michael Rainer from Black Rainer. It's just exceptional in his team have just designed this most beautiful housing complex that will once finished, be for fully self contained units. Three of them are two bedroom, one of them's three bedroom, and importantly also a shared common space for these young mums to engage with each other and form relationships and
have program work delivered there. And so this particular project will be specifically for mums under the age of twenty four who are pregnant or parenting to live in the property and receive the most high quality support possible in a really high dosage amount, so that we can then demonstrate that if that happens, these women will then move out of this property after twelve to eighteen months and never again engage with the service system as they have
been before. And we looked to evaluate that and then replicate it in other communities across Queensland.
How fantastic.
Yeah, so that project so donated the land, we had the designs done for free. We were able to fundraise some money in Queensland Government gave us a grant to finish construction. We had a build or agree to do it at cost the amazing McNab and we started construction in June last year and we'll be welcoming four young mums and their kids to move in in March, so six six to eight weeks away.
Oh my gosh, that's just amazing.
It's incredible.
How do you choose who's going to go in there?
It's tricky because we also want to make sure anyone that moves in there is set up for success. So we understand that the housing and the support model we offer is not for everyone. It doesn't suit highly complex women, highly cons situations that are really acute. So as I mentioned,
we're not refuge or christ this accommodation. So generally women move into our properties when the domestican found their violence incident is somewhat resolved or is in the pathway to being resolved, and we see we offer this opportunity to women who have the capacity to make the most of it and see this as an opportunity for twelve to eighty months. I have a safe haven that I can and it's a place where I can gather myself, sleep well, take deep breaths, My children can stabilize, and I can
make and take steps towards my future. So for some women, that's not suitable, and so we do engage with women and better take time to understand their circumstances. But even so, we definitely don't have enough places for all the women that want this opportunity.
Do you track their forward movement their success.
After they leave us? Unfortunately, No, It's something I would really like to do. I'd like to do that longitunital study. There are certainly some tenants who stay in touch with us and they want to pay it forward and they want to offer their stories of hope to other tenants. And that's really beautiful to hear.
That takes courage to do that, because you could put your head down in shame.
Yeah, I think a big part. I think what's happening in our community, and maybe it's just the company I keep, but the level of shame is definitely lessening because as part of their healing journey, these women are recognizing their own personal strength. And so an example is in that
Logan project I was just talking about. One of the most fabulous parts of that project is that we've been walking beside this group of young Logan moms who've got lived experience of violence and homelessness, and they've been acting as expert advisors in this project to tell us what is needed. So we're not guessing or coming in from another space saying this is what you need to be better. We're using the expert knowledge of these young mums to
inform the design and the program delivery. And what I've witnessed as part of this project, there's this transference of skills and this blossoming of all parties. So as an example, Michael Rayner, who's at a fabulous architect well renowned, award winning across Australia, has engaged with these young Logan moms and the experience has transformed him and he's publicly said that the experience of working with them has redefined for him the role that architecture plays in people's lives and
his purpose within it. And equally, the transference of these young mums engaging with this project group of professionals in developing up this housing complex. Has seen these young mums blossom and has seen them understand the power of their voice and their experience to make a difference. And there's this one young woman who's become a friend of mine. When she was thirteen, she was in grade eight, she was essentially living in the playground of Hungry Jackson Logan
because she could not go home. So at age fifteen, she chose to have a child so that she could have something to love and have something love her. But by the time she was twenty five, she had three children and she was living in a refuge with a bag each for each of the children and her car which was her safety net. So her trajectory was living coming from an unsafe family environment, then falling into an unsafe family environment, and then taking her children out of that.
She has blossomed through this experience as becoming this expert advisor. She's now being paid to speak for other organizations and inform their program development. I've seen her children, her three young girls, witness the change in their mum, and they themselves are stepping up for leadership positions in their schools now, because I can see the change. And this is before anyone's even moved into this housing complex. This is just
in the delivery of it. It's just the juju and the magic that's going into this project is just rolling on.
Yeah, that is so phenomenal. And you know that's now on her CV. Yes, yes, yes, and that's going to be with her forever.
Yes, she said, it's what's been a turning point in her life. But even so, like I mean, I love this woman and she's smart and savvy, and she's the first one that said that she just hasn't been around the right people her entire life, and so there but for the grace of God, go I you know, it's people, it's we're lucky if we are born into situations where
we have choice and the opportunity. But I still see trauma pop up in her, and I see her confidence waiver, and I see her find it difficult to think that people want to know what she thinks about things. So it's a long road to recovery, but she keeps showing up for it. So I'm really proud of her.
If people that are listening to the body want to help out what's the best way.
So lots of ways. We are constantly fundraising, so funds are necessary, so we would encourage anyone. Of course, you can make a donation to the Trust, but also host an event and choose us as your beneficiary. Hold a lunch, do a golfing day, do anything, and particularly do it with your community, like do it where you connect with others, because then there's lots of multiple benef it's coming from it. Keep an eye up for your friends, identify unhealthy relationships
and encourage conversations. I think you know you're helping us if you're reducing the problem.
That's a really tough one having those conversations.
It is particularly when often you're working. You know, these women that are in relationships have got their partner who are separating people from their friends. We actually, with the help of Small Steps for Hannah, started up a website a couple of years ago and it's on the back of our handy guide of support services. So for about thirteen years, the Lady Musgrave Trust has been producing a service directory of all the organizations across Queensland that are
funded to support women. That were set up because we know that it's really hard to find an organization when you're in a good state of mind, and it's all absolutely impossible when you're feeling stressed. So these service directories that we've got hard copies ones for Brisbane and surrounds and another one is for Regional Queensland and they're really easy to use, free resource to find an organization. I
can support you. Small steps for Hannah got in touch with us and they said that if they'd have known about this service directory, it would have made a difference for them because they, as a family and their friendship group would have known more what to do when Hannah when they witnessed what Hannah was going through before she
was murdered. So with funding from them and their support, we were able to set up an online version of our Handy Guide and that has increased information around domestic and family violence and what to do if you see evidence of it happening in your fam for a family or friend. So the website for that is the Handyguide dot com dot au. We encourage people to go there
you can. It's very easy to use. As I mentioned, there's information, but it's also a very useful way to put in a postcode and a keyword and it connects you with organizations and that location that can give you more assistance. So i'd strongly encourage people to go there.
What I might do is get the web different websites great from you that you think will be relevant for our listeners.
DV connector phenomenal as well, and they're twenty four hours. And then this particularly if it's if you need to assistance in leaving a situation, they're very good at liaising with lots of different organization just to find somewhere for you to go to safely. And then it's really strongly also encourage one eight hundred respect and that's a very useful counseling service that can support you through the situation. And they've just incredibly well resourced. And so the handygard's
great for to connect you to services and organizations. But those are the top ones that I would absolutely site. Okay starting point.
Okay, so I will put all of those in great the website. I just want to say thank you for coming in today. I myself have signed up to help with you guys, and a really dear friend of mine has as well, So we're all going to catch up for coffee. But I am so excited. I definitely want to come down and help do what those amazing apartments down in Logan. Yes, I will be there for that.
That's Good's good to come to the Working.
Bee, absolutely, and I encourage all of you. There's nothing better than thinking about other people rather than yourself when it comes to healing, healing from trauma, anxiety, depression. So you know, this is a really great organization to help out. So I would encourage you all if you're looking for someone to go and donate some time or some money to or resources, get in touch with these guys. The Lady must Grave Trust Victorious the CEO. Thank you so so much for coming in.
Thank you for having me. I've loved finding it in my pleasure