Domestic abuse services hang by a thread – we can't waste any more money
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Version 0 of 1. The £20m domestic abuse fund, announced by the government on International Women’s Day, is so desperately needed that of course it’s to be welcomed. Frankly, it came not a moment too soon. On the ground, despite successive injections of government funds, the situation facing domestic abuse services is reaching breaking point. Much like domestic abuse itself – a slow but steady chipping away of a person’s self-esteem and autonomy – the progressive erosion of specialist domestic abuse services has created a terrifying situation. Both refuges and community-based services for women and children escaping or recovering from domestic abuse are under intolerable pressure. Since 2010, we have lost 17% of specialist refuges in England and a third of all referrals to refuges are turned away. Women’s Aid’s most recent national survey found that over a third of domestic abuse organisations were running a service with no dedicated funding at all – in other words, of the services that remain, many are on a knife-edge. On just one typical day in 2015, 92 women and 75 children were turned away from refuge. It is no exaggeration to say that some women pay for these cuts with their lives: the Femicide Census found that 76% of the 598 women killed by their ex-partner or ex-spouse were killed within the first year after separation. Going anywhere near a controlling perpetrator after you have once escaped is extremely dangerous. It is one constant in our ever-changing world: men kill and injure women they know intimately. Two women a week, on average, are killed by a partner or ex-partner in England and Wales. The extraordinary fragility of specialist services is even more worrying given the sheer scale of the problem they address: domestic abuse is endemic. We simply must provide women fleeing abuse with somewhere to go. The statistics are not improving either – so obviously the current system is not working. It is centred on the response of the criminal justice system, and on short-term risk management. This is not what women and children need: what they need are opportunities to seek help earlier, and the expert support of specialist domestic abuse services to help them recover in the long-term, to lead independent and happy lives. So what needs to happen now? To answer this we need to examine why, despite increases in government funding in recognition of the crisis, the situation continues to deteriorate. Put simply, it is surprising but true that the government is more willing to spend money than to hold anyone at local level accountable for ensuring it goes where it’s needed. If the £20m goes the way of so much local authority spending in this area, the government’s good intentions will count for nothing. Local authorities and other commissioners need to wake up: so-called “gender neutrality” is irrelevant to domestic abuse. The government is clear on the gender dynamics of domestic abuse and the importance of specific services for women. It’s time to demand the same clarity on the ground. And the government must find a way of allowing refuges to operate as a national network, which again means more than just words. Local authority commissioners are increasingly restricting refuge places to women from their own area – despite the fact that women must be able to flee many miles to find safety. This simply cannot be allowed, and it is up to ministers, whose commitment to this issue I am certain is genuine, to stop allowing it. So, thank you prime minister for the £20m. Please don’t let it be spent on more risk management that covers agencies’ backs, more generic hostels and B&Bs, more one-size-fits-all family support services, more non-gendered “it’s tit for tat” approaches that provide perpetrators with yet another arena for coercive, controlling abuse. Why do you think specialist organisations are still running services when all their funding has been cut? Because the women and children keep coming, seeking support they can trust and that meets their needs. And because the women who have supported survivors for decades, so often survivors themselves, know the desperate danger if they close. We must spend this money wisely, while lifesaving services are still hanging by a thread. Before it breaks. Talk to us on Twitter via @Gdnvoluntary and join our community for your free Guardian Voluntary Sector monthly newsletter, with analysis and opinion sent direct to you on the first Thursday of the month. |