“Shocking gaps” in funding mean domestic violence shelters for women are turning away hundreds of victims a day, Women’s Aid has claimed.
Following its annual survey of refuges and domestic violence services, the charity claims 112 specialist jobs have been lost over the last year, thanks largelty to funding cuts. On a single day in June, 155 women and 103 children were turned away from overstretched refuges.
Overall, more than 9,500 women and in excess of 10,000 children were placed in refuges over the year.
The charity’s Chief Executive, Polly Neate, said:
“Specialist gender-specific domestic violence services are reaching a breaking point. Over 1.2 million women were estimated to have experienced domestic violence last year and two women a week are killed by perpetrators.”
The government must ensure “ensure adequate funding for the sector” in “the immediate future”, she insisted.
“If [they do] not, the safety net for women experiencing domestic violence in England will fall through, leaving even more women and children to be harmed and killed by people they should be able to trust.”
A spokesperson for the Home Office responded to the claims:
“Domestic violence shatters lives and we need to do everything possible to prevent this dreadful crime. This government has ring-fenced nearly £40m of funding for specialist local support services and national helplines to help people escape abusive situations. We have also rolled out Clare’s Law, domestic violence protection orders and extended the definition of domestic abuse to include 16 and 17-year-olds.”
Here we go again; all the old baloney. I expect we’ll still be hearing all the same old bent statistics trotted out long after we’ve all packed up and gone to Mars.
Maybe 155 women in June were turned away because a DV refuge wasn’t considered appropriate for their needs or they were suspected of exagerration, the latter a frequent enough occurrence in family disputes. Or maybe England were playing in the World Cup final that day where we know from all the Women’s Aid research findings (more baloney borrowed from America) that all men are unconscionably violent all the time to their women.
It’s hard to take any of this particularly seriously when the biggest “Shocking gaps” in funding are for male victims of DVA (in fact it is basically just one big effing ENORMOUS shocking ‘gap’) and groups like Women’s Aid don’t even address the issue because the people affected have a Y chromosome and so clearly they couldn’t care less.
I thought ACPO and Women’s Aid had long ago solved the DV problem. Just why do they have to keep shaking the money tree? Policies not working perhaps. The answer is certainly not in criminalising more men.
Most sexual assault and child abuse crime could be reduced at a stroke, instantly, by putting natural fathers back in charge (in the modern sense) of their charges. The solution is way to simple for politicians and DV extremists to grasp.
If any report can finally put the lie to the nasty anti-male propaganda perpetrated by extremist DV groups like Women’s Aid and slavishly followed by fellow-travellers in the police and other state bodies, it’s this one.
I hope Marilyn’s blog can highlight this report and its findings with a stand-alone article. It warrants it.
Paul,
it’s a good find but all this is already well known – nobody with power seems to care – there are far too many vested interests looking to ignore evidence like this.
“Man bad” – “Woman good” is their narrative and they appear to be sticking to it.
Credit where it’s due, Luke. I saw it on Karen Woodall’s blog and thought it of interest here. I should have mentioned that.
Either way, it’s good to see some sense written about DV for a change. All this hate stuff propagated by the DV industry and their fellow travellers in family law is getting rather tedious. Time for the debate to move on. The Duluth Wheel of Control has fallen off into the ditch where I hope it stays.
Same old tripe.