An ethnic women's refuge organisation says demand for its safe houses has nearly doubled over the past two years, with women facing increasingly complex barriers to getting help.

Shakti Women's Refuge has provided more than 7000 overnight spaces over the past two years, almost double the roughly 3600 spaces it provided in the preceding two-year period.

The organisation opened a third safe house in Auckland last month as it continues to see women and children seeking support, including women who face additional challenges because of their immigration status.

Founded in Auckland in 1995, Shakti has since grown into a national organisation, with branches in Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin.

"There's never a day when our safe houses are not full," said Shakti strategic development manager Shasha Ali.

Ali moved to New Zealand from Singapore with her family 25 years ago and has Punjabi, Singaporean and Indonesian heritage.

She said her own experience of family harm had also shaped her understanding of the issue.

The new safe house, she said, was a response to the growing number of women seeking help.

"Throughout the year there is always women and children requiring support," she said.

"Some of them are on a visa and they might have challenges to get support and social assistance otherwise and our safe houses are also designed to support women who are more vulnerable when it comes to their immigration status."

Ali said Shakti had also seen an increase in self-referrals over the past few years.

She said many of the cases the organisation had dealt with in the past involved culturally oppressive practices within South Asian communities, including dowry-related violence and honour-based violence.

However, the profile of women seeking help had changed.

"We are now seeing women who are highly educated also accessing our services," Ali said.

She said stigma around asking for help remained one of the biggest challenges in tackling family harm in South Asian communities.

Whether someone is a new migrant or has grown up in New Zealand, Ali said, the pressure around family honour and reputation could make it hard to seek help.

"At the end of the day, we're talking about family honour," she said.

"We're talking about the reputation of a family that might also be connected by caste or might be connected by the region that they've come from.

"These are the mindset challenges that women who need to break through and break away from the cycles of abuse have to sort of undergo before they come out."

Ali said that despite Shakti having operated for more than three decades, the organisation was still sometimes viewed as a "homewrecker".

She argued that communities needed to recognise that there was no home if a family was being held together through tolerance of abuse or inequality between women and men.

"We are proudly and unapologetically feminist in our approach when it comes to working with Asian African and Middle Eastern women and children," she said.

"And we stand by the fact that, at the end of the day, safety comes first."

Ali said Shakti supported women from their first call to escape violence, providing immediate safety support, legal and immigration assistance, financial support and advocacy until they are safe and ready to live independently in the community.

Another organisation working to support women and children experiencing family harm is Sahaayta Counselling Services.

Founded in 2013, Sahaayta began in Manurewa, providing counselling services to South Asian communities.

"Sahaayta was founded because we saw that there's an increasingly gap for counselling services especially among Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and other South Asian groups," said team leader of ethnic services Zoya Salim Kara.

Kara has worked as a counsellor for more than a decade.

Originally from Mumbai, she came to New Zealand from India in 2008 as an international student.

She said there was still a stigma around counselling among South Asian communities.

"We don't have the concept of counselling in the eastern cultures and we didn't have it while we were growing up," she said.

"You didn't have a counsellor or a psychologist. You directly saw a psychiatrist in India. So you literally had to have some underlying mental health or, you know, believed to be having severe mental health issues to see somebody or seek help.

"So, there's a lot of shame. There's a lot of stigma and it's still not normalised."

However, Sahaayta had found that when a service was able to build trust and provide ethical and confidential support, people were more likely to come forward.

Kara said she had also seen a rise in sexual harm among South Asian communities, particularly within the Indian community.

"Initially, years ago, we'd get a lot of physical abuse. We'd get verbal abuse, financial abuse. What we're seeing today increase every day is sexual harm," she said.

Women used to disclose sexual harm around their eighth or ninth counselling session, Kara said, but they were now more likely to talk about it during their second session.

She believed that could be because people were more aware that help was available and that they could talk about their experiences.

"If two clients disclose sexual violence to me eight years ago, now it's eight clients out of 10 that disclose sexual violence," Kara said.

Kara said South Asian communities faced unique challenges when it came to family harm.

She identified social conditioning around gender roles, beliefs about divorce and its impact on family honour, and the idea that marriage was for life as some of the barriers.

"Immigration and visas are another major challenge," she said.

Kara said many women faced psychological abuse from partners who threatened them over their visa status, including telling them they would not extend or support their residency applications.

Some women were also threatened with being sent back to their home country, she said.

Sahaayta offers a range of programmes, including its Breaking the Cycle programme, which runs for 12 to 14 weeks, trauma counselling and counselling for children.

The organisation works with agencies and entities such as New Zealand Police, Oranga Tamariki, Gandhi Nivas, Family Success Matters, Family Action and Women's Refuge.

Kara said more needed to be done, particularly around interpretation services.

She said the Southeast Asian community was growing in New Zealand, but the workforce needed to support those communities had not kept pace.

She pointed to the Filipino and Rohingya communities as groups that needed more support.

Ranjna Patel, founder of Gandhi Nivas, a community-led initiative addressing family harm in South Auckland, said the problem remained widespread but was often hidden.

"What I've learned from an observer outside of the service is that it is a nationwide problem," she said.

Patel said she initially started Gandhi Nivas believing family harm was primarily a South Asian or Indian problem.

But she later realised it was a much broader issue. Gandhi Nivas now provides services to Māori, Pasifika and European communities, as well as Indian individuals.

"Family harm is a bigger problem, and aggravating factors are not necessarily just the man," she said.

"It is the whole family dynamic, the pressures that come into the home that causes family harm," she said.

"Our philosophy is our biggest contribution, which has seen such a big success in dealing with family harm."

If you are a victim of family violence or in a relationship that makes you fearful about your own or anyone else's safety, seek help as soon as possible.

• Shakti: 0800 742 584 (24 hours)
• Shine National Helpline: 0508 744 633 (24 hours)
• Gandhi Nivas: 0800 426 344
• National Network of Stopping Violence: 03 391 0048
• Women's Refuge crisis: 0800 733 843 (24 hours)
• Fatima Foundation: 0800 222 432