At our June meeting, Branch president, Ann Apthorpe introduced guest speaker, Penny Watt.
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Penny is a Domestic Violence Professional and Safety Action Meeting Co-ordinator with Women's Domestic Violence Court Advocacy, with 10 years of experience in this field.
She is part of a team that provides services to Bathurst, Orange and Mudgee as well as Cowra.
Providing a feeling of safety and security to abused family members by helping with transport, housing support and emergency food vouchers is central to Penny's work.
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Referrals to this service come from the police, local GPs, Vinnies or the women themselves.
When a domestic violence matter is brought to court a member of the team sits with them so that the victim can feel supported when testifying.
Currently Penny is running information sessions for teachers, so that they can learn to recognise the signs of possible domestic violence affecting school students.
Penny reported that Cowra has very good support services for the victims of domestic violence, such as that provided by Cowra Information and Neighbourhood Centre and that a specialised crisis centre, called The Orchard, is being built in Orange.
Year 10 students have also been made aware of the domestic violence problem through a program called Lovebites.
The meeting agreed to make a donation towards the emergency food voucher assistance package.
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Member Jean Sandberg thanked Penny for her informative talk and presented her with a beautiful posy of Jill Allen's natives.
In other news, it was reported that the 2019 Sydney Royal Easter Show Tea Rooms were again a huge success, selling 49,977 scones over the 12 days of the show, which was an increase on the number sold last year.
The raffle raised almost $7,000 for the CWA Disaster Relief Fund and a total of $150,000 was raised for CWA of NSW.
What a wonderful effort for 12 days work.