Bonnie Support Services

Bonnie Support Services

Uncategorized

Finding the Courage to Break the Silence

I am new to Bonnie’s and in my first month, I walked downstairs to see a client sitting across from her family worker. The client had the same background as my grandmother. Immediately I knew something wasn’t right. The fear in her eyes made me think of my grandmother. It also made me wonder: what […]

Click to read more

Our Bonnie’s Clan

I am leaving Bonnie’s for a year to have a baby. While working on my handover, I remembered the time I left a few years back to have my son. My water broke early, and I had to stay in hospital for almost 3 weeks. Lying on the hospital bed in a gown without any […]

Click to read more

Food for the Soul

We recently had a client who arrived with her son, they were empty handed and needed our help. Mum was on a visa, which meant she didn’t have an income and couldn’t work. They had just left a violent environment and were finally safe at Bonnie’s. First thing I did, after our initial intake meeting, […]

Click to read more

Technology Facilitated Abuse

We live in a time of extreme technological advancement. Although this is generally a good thing because it can mean our lives are made that little bit easier, this also means that there are new ways that perpetrators of domestic violence can inflict harm upon victim-survivors. Technology-facilitated abuse is a unique form of interpersonal violence […]

Click to read more

Not Just a Name

  I was sitting in the doctor’s office, with my head bent toward my phone when I heard the radiologist call out a name. I looked around the room as she called it out again. My eyes landed on the clock and saw that it was just about time for my appointment. I moved toward […]

Click to read more

Multicultural and feminist – We are Aunty Bonnie’s

Hi! I’m new to Bonnie’s and this is my first blog, so I thought I’d write a bit about me:  I have always worked in therapeutic environments with women, as a counsellor, a friend and a wife. Now I wanted to work with women in a different setting, I wanted to work at Bonnie’s. So […]

Click to read more

One donation, a world of difference.

When women and children come into Bonnie’s they often arrive with little or none of their belongings.  It’s often just a bag with whatever they could grab when they were leaving. In the case of Emma, and her 6 month old twins and 8 year old, they had nothing but the clothes on their backs. […]

Click to read more

On-call

Not everyone knows this about us, but we have a 24hr, 7 days a week, on-call service. The purpose of the on-call service is to respond to emergencies experienced by our clients and to answer calls from external agencies and referrers.  I can still clearly remember the first time I was rostered on to do […]

Click to read more

Spirit woman

I started making my spirit woman about 6 months ago. I find arts and craft very therapeutic and I create different things on a regular basis as a part of both my self-care and a love for creating art. I paid a visit into the recycling place in town and came across the cotton reels. […]

Click to read more

What comes next

We know leaving domestic violence is never easy, but what we don’t often talk about is how hard the ‘what comes next’ part can be too. Recently I worked with a Mum with three small children who were doing it tough. Mum had no friends or family in Australia, no support network and no job. […]

Click to read more

The final piece

When I first met Jenny and her 5 children, they were on the brink of homelessness. Eviction loomed and they had nowhere to go. A single mum and 5 kids, looking for a place in today’s housing crisis? Definitely not the easiest. So they came to Bonnie’s.  We were able to help them move into […]

Click to read more

Simon’s story

Being roughly one year into my job, I was very excited when Tracy asked me to join the team at the annual DVNSW conference. This is a 2 day conference where everyone who works with domestic and family violence and homelessness comes together to share knowledge, ideas and ways we can improve the work we […]

Click to read more