Arabic version: ميشن أستراليا تخشى فقدان الاتصال بعد الانتقال إلى باتشلور

According to ABC News, Mission Australia says it may have lost contact with some people moved from Darwin’s shuttered YiSSA short-stay facility to the Batchelor Transitional Facility last week. The move followed the closure of the 400-bed Darwin site after the Northern Territory government rejected a Commonwealth offer to help buy it.

Just 23 people accepted the offer to relocate to the new 90-bed facility in Batchelor, about 100 kilometres south of Darwin, NT Children and Families Minister Robyn Cahill said. Mission Australia NT director Paul Royce said some former YiSSA residents had moved in with family or returned to country, but the organisation was worried it had lost contact with others.

Mission Australia runs the Batchelor facility and has four staff working with the Department of Children and Families to help people transition out of homelessness. Royce said the facility was smaller and not a long-term answer, stressing the need for a solution beyond the site’s 19-month lease.

Top End Women’s Legal Service chief executive Caitlin Weatherby-Fell said the service had received increased presentations from women seeking emergency and crisis accommodation, with greater risk and safety-planning needs for women and children facing violence. Local Labor member for Batchelor Dheran Young also raised concerns about access to services, including domestic and family violence programs, and said services were in Darwin.