Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and households are safe.

By 2031, the rate of all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children is reduced at least by 50% as progress towards zero.

Rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women seeking assistance from Specialist Homelessness Services for reasons of family violence

This measure is defined as

Numerator – number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women aged 15 years or over seeking assistance from Specialist Homelessness Services (SHS) and who have experienced family and domestic violence (FDV)

Denominator – number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women aged 15 years or over in the population

and is presented as a rate per 10,000 people.

National Agreement on Closing the Gap July 2020

18 November 2024

Contextual information

A low or decreasing rate is desirable. However, an increase in the rate may indicate that more victims have the support to seek assistance and to leave family and domestic violence situations. See the data quality considerations for more information.

Name: Specialist Homelessness Services Collection (SHSC) data cubes

Frequency: Annual

Documentation (links): https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/homelessness-services/shsc-data-cubes/contents/about

https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-peoples/estimates-and-projections-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-australians

Provider name: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Provider area: Homelessness data

2021-22

2022-23

State and territory and Australia, by Indigenous status, by sex

Numerator divided by Denominator multiplied by 10,000

Rates per 10,000 shown for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples only. Age‑standardised rates are provided to allow for comparisons between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non‑Indigenous people. Age‑standardised rates are calculated using the direct method of age standardisation. For this indicator, the age groups used are 10‑year age groups (15–54 years) and ages 55 years or over. See the How to interpret the data page for more information.

Counting rules

Numerator:

The SHSC contains information about people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and seek assistance from SHS agencies. All SHS agencies that receive funding under the National Agreement on Social Housing and Homelessness (previously the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement and National Affordable Housing Agreement) to provide specialist homelessness services are in scope for the SHSC.

An SHSC client is identified as experiencing FDV if in any support during the reporting period:

• the client was formally referred from a non-SHS FDV agency to an SHS agency, or
• ‘family and domestic violence' was reported as a reason they sought assistance, or during any support period they required assistance for FDV.

The age of the client is defined as their age on the start date of their first support period in the reporting period. For those who were existing clients at the beginning of the reporting period, the client’s age on the first day of the reporting period is used.

State or territory refers to the place where the service was received by the client.

Excludes (numerator):

• People for whom Indigenous status was not stated. Data on the number of clients whose Indigenous status was not stated is provided for context.

Denominator:

• The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population is calculated for December (of the reference period) based on the average of two ABS June estimates of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population data is 2021 Census-based (using the ABS medium projection series).
• The non-Indigenous population is calculated by subtracting the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population from the total population (December of the reference period).

Disaggregations:

Sex refers to a person's biological characteristics at birth. A person's sex is usually described as being either male or female, but may be recorded as ‘other’. See Person—sex, code X (aihw.gov.au). An ‘Other’ category was added to the sex item in Client components of the SHSC for episodes starting from 1 July 2019. Clients identifying as Sex = Other have been included in the ‘Female’ category from 2019-20 onwards due to data quality and confidentiality concerns.

Differences in SHSC data over time and between jurisdictions may be influenced by the underlying state and territory policies, programs or systems. This might affect the service delivery area, the characteristics of priority clients, or how services work together to respond to client needs. See Specialist Homelessness Services Collection, 2022–23; Quality Statement (aihw.gov.au).

From the 2022-23 reporting period onwards, the AIHW data cubes have used a technique known as perturbation to randomly adjust cells. See the How to interpret the data page for more information. Discrepancies may occur between sums of the component items and reported totals, and the data may not match other published sources.

Clients who received services in more than one state or territory within a reporting period will be counted in each state or territory separately. Therefore, the sum of the clients in the states and territories can be greater than the number of distinct clients in Australia.

The option for including clients formally referred from a non-SHS FDV agency was introduced on 1 July 2019 and only applies to support periods starting on or after this date. The addition of the new FDV referral item increased the number of FDV clients in 2019–20 by 0.5%.

Future reporting will seek to include the following additional disaggregations:

• remoteness areas and other small geographic areas (where available)
• disability status
• age.