Muslim Women Australia (MWA) is honoured to have launched the next stage of our Crisis Accommodation Expansion, through the NSW Government’s Core and Cluster Program.
Through the establishment of a new, purpose-designed crisis accommodation site, MWA is now delivering 64 additional crisis accommodation beds, bringing our total capacity across the Canterbury-Bankstown area to 94 crisis accommodation beds. Together, these two stages represent a substantial and sustained increase in MWA’s capacity to support women, children and families escaping domestic and family violence (DFV), and reflect our long-term commitment to meeting the growing needs of multicultural communities across New South Wales.
This is what safe, inclusive and culturally responsive crisis accommodation can look like for victim-survivors from multicultural communities.
More Than Accommodation: A Place of Safety, Dignity and Belonging
This new home is more than accommodation. It is a place of safety, dignity and belonging.
It was created with the belief that every person deserves to feel valued, respected and supported, especially during times of vulnerability. While it provides a roof over one’s head, its deeper purpose is to offer something equally important: stability, hope and the opportunity to begin again.
As a faith-inspired organisation, our work is guided by values of compassion, mercy, justice and care for others. These values are universal, and extend to all people, regardless of faith, culture, background or circumstance. They remind us that every person carries inherent dignity and deserves to be treated with kindness and respect.
This home represents resilience, the courage to keep moving forward despite hardship, knowing one is supported and guided. It represents hope, the belief that difficult moments do not define anyone’s essence or future. And it represents community, a place where women are welcomed, supported and given the space and quality support, within trauma-informed principles, to rebuild their lives with confidence and purpose.
More than a building, it is a place where hope can grow, resilience can be strengthened, and people can find not only shelter, but a sense of home, safety and life.
A Vision Shaped by Community
As with our first expansion in 2025, the new site has been shaped by lived experience, frontline practice and ongoing community consultation. Every element of its design has been guided by one goal: to promote dignity, privacy, cultural safety and holistic recovery for the women, children and families who will call it a safe place, even if only for a season.
This next stage strengthens MWA’s capacity to respond to the diverse and often complex needs of those seeking safety, including:
- Larger and multi-generational families
- Mothers with teenage sons
- Older women and single individuals
- Women with disabilities or caring for children with disabilities
- Those at risk of homelessness
Our vision extends beyond physical locations towards an expansive increase in capacity to support culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities experiencing DFV across crisis, transitional and social housing, meeting the needs of clients through targeted allocation and increased privacy, including for families with physical and intellectual disabilities, and with family unification prioritised wherever possible.
The MWA Model of Care
MWA utilises an integrated service delivery model within a therapeutic healing framework to support and empower CALD women and their children experiencing DFV. Our model brings together a range of expert service providers to deliver holistic support, focused on prevention and early intervention, safe and supported crisis and transitional accommodation, rapid rehousing, and intensive support for clients with complex needs.
The MWA service model provides a one-stop service that upholds client dignity, agency and choice, and works toward equitable access and culturally, linguistically and religiously inclusive service provision that is client-centred, trauma-informed, strengths-based and collaborative.
A fundamental principle of our model is the inclusion of faith and cultural competency, ensuring the multifaceted needs of women are met in accordance with their intersecting identities. This includes support to navigate formal state-based processes, such as family law, criminal law and property settlement matters, alongside customary and communal processes, such as religious mediation and arbitration, all within a safety framework.
Individualised, Wrap-Around Support
MWA provides individualised case management for women, as well as individualised case management for children, working holistically and inclusive of individual, familial and intergenerational responses to support healing and improved safety, housing and wellbeing outcomes.
Intensive case management includes:
- Accommodation, tenancy and housing support
- Safety planning
- Medical, health and wellbeing services
- Financial support and counselling
- Immigration support and status resolution
- Legal services and support
- Individualised intensive case management for children
- Parenting support
- Support to manage interpersonal relationships
- Future security planning, including education and employment
This work is underpinned by long-standing, demonstrated partnerships with support agencies, outreach services, peak bodies and housing providers across the sector.
Serving with Dignity
Victim-survivors of DFV deserve more than a bed for the night, they deserve a place that honours who they are. For many women and families from multicultural and multi-faith communities, mainstream crisis accommodation has not always reflected their cultural identity, faith, family circumstances or individual needs.
This next stage of expansion continues to build safe, secure environments that support healing and long-term recovery. It provides greater flexibility to accommodate a wider range of household types and spaces that support cultural and spiritual practice, as well as improved accessibility for women and children with disability.
Intake and Referral
Service Intake Commences: 1st August 2026
Referrals:
Call 02 9750 6916 (MWA Centralised Referral Line)
Intake available Monday–Friday, 9am–5pm
Length of Stay:
Crisis accommodation typically ranges from 4 to 12 weeks, depending on individual circumstances and case planning.
A Holistic, Community-Led Approach
For over 40 years, MWA has walked alongside thousands of women and families, providing not only shelter but hope, dignity and support. Our services are built on trust, cultural insight and a deep and enduring commitment to social justice and equity.
This next stage of our Crisis Accommodation Expansion represents more than additional beds and a new building, it reflects our shared commitment to ensuring that women, children and families experiencing violence have access to safety, dignity, healing and hope, delivered in a way that honours their cultural identity, faith, family circumstances and individual needs.
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Need Help or Want to Know More?
Phone: 02 9750 6916
Visit: www.mwa.org.au
Email: info (@) mwa.org.au
Email: info (@) mwa.org.au , but without the internal chaos that comes from trying to carry what was never yours.
