Community needs safe house: Official

LIKE most of the provinces, Western Highlands does not have a safe house for the victims of violence, says an official.
Edith Namba from the family support centre (FSC) in Western Highlands told The National that survivors of violence who seek refuge and counselling were counselled and sent home because they did not have a safe house.
She said it was a challenge for them, especially with communication and the lack of proper referral pathway.
“Unfortunately the referral pathway is incomplete because we don’t have a safe house. We ask the survivors where the safest place is for them to go and we make sure that we leave them there,” she said.
Namba said they had established a referral pathway and had involved stakeholders including police, the community development office and other non-government organisations.
She said the United Nations Children’s Fund helped them roll out the programme.
Namba said they had rolled out gender-based violence (GBV) awareness and programmes to the districts but they were short of funds to establish a centre or a room for patients.
She said it was important to build a centre at the district level because the majority of the population was in the districts.
She said workers were trained on GBV and Child Protection Act in order to apply proper steps to help survivors and to know where to refer them for treatment, counselling or protection.
Namba said based on their statistics child sexual abuse was higher than adult sexual abuse.