Women are still falling through the gaps. What if services were designed around women’s lives?

Alcohol or other drug use. Violence at home. Keeping children safe. Finding stable housing. Living with trauma. Meaningful work or study. Women seeking support rarely present with one clearly defined problem. Life simply doesn’t work that way.

Yet still too often, the service system asks women to decide which issue comes first. Is it alcohol and other drug use? Domestic and family violence? Homelessness? Mental health?

Services tend to be organised around programs, funding streams and eligibility criteria. Women’s lives are not. When support is fragmented, the work of connecting it often falls back on the woman. She  repeats her story, navigating multiple referrals, while trying to work out different eligibility requirements and maintain contact with several services at once. It would be exhausting at the best of times, let alone while dealing with the circumstances that led her to seek support.

Imagine navigating several complex systems while experiencing violence, housing instability, trauma or alcohol or other drug use issues. Even good services can inadvertently create a fragmented experience when their responses do not connect.

Instead of asking, ‘Which service or worker owns this issue?’, we should be asking, ‘What does this woman need next and how do we make sure the response connects?’

Our work with Toora Women shows what this can look like in practice. Together, we developed a practice framework that connects alcohol and other drug treatment, domestic and family violence support and homelessness services across one continuum of care.

The framework rests on a no wrong door approach. Women can receive alcohol and other drug support wherever they enter the organisation, rather than being redirected because they identified another issue first.

A centralised intake process matches support to each woman’s needs, circumstances and readiness for change. As those needs change, women can move between brief support, community rehabilitation and residential treatment without having to start again.

Care planning connects clinical treatment and case management with housing, health, family, legal and practical support. Shared principles give different teams a consistent way of working that is trauma informed, person centred, flexible, non judgemental and focused on each woman’s strengths and agency.

Strong referral relationships matter, but they are not enough. Entry points, eligibility thresholds, team roles, information sharing and accountability must all be deliberately designed to support continuity of care.

If we genuinely want trauma informed, person centred care for women, we need to pay as much attention to how services connect as we do to how each individual service performs.

What would the service system look like if it had been designed around women’s lives from the beginning?

The Toora Women practice framework gives us a compelling place to start.