Government figures for 2023-2024 identified domestic abuse one of the leading causes of homelessness and as the most frequent reason for loss of the last settled home for those owed a duty by a local authority to relieve homelessness. Risk of or experience of domestic abuse was a common support need among households with children. Single Homeless Project (SHP) notes 60% of homeless adults in temporary accommodation are women. Similarly, 63% of families with children living in temporary accommodation are single parents.
In the critically underfunded circumstances of the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector and a crumbling legal system abandoned by the Conservative administration, survivors of domestic abuse are frequently left with no option but to leave home and present as homeless. Alternatives should in theory be available to ensure their safety and ability to remain in their home without the perpetrator, but these are either not enforced, or legal funding to obtain them is unavailable due to stringent Legal Aid criteria which excludes many women.
All too often, leaving home does not end abuse, but it can result in women losing their job, children having to change schools, and families being moved away from health, mobility and social support, when their wish is to remain safely in their home.
Women note that injunctions can be breached several times, but these are deemed ‘minor’ breaches and therefore not enforced. Survivors without access to funds or Legal Aid are left floundering, trying to navigate the law and conduct their own legal cases whilst holding down a job, and caring for children in adverse circumstances.
Perpetrators, who know how to manipulate these systems to their advantage, continue to abuse, manipulate and harass survivors with the result that women are advised, or compelled to leave home and present as homeless.
As weeks and months turn into years due to the lack of secure, affordable accommodation, survivors are trapped in so-called ‘temporary’ accommodation. Research by Shelter found that 6 in 10 households in temporary accommodation spent more than a year there.
For women in temporary accommodation there is no equality, and there is no chance of career advancement when children are doing their homework in the bathroom, the only room other than the one they live and sleep in, with no knowledge of where they may be living in the next few weeks let alone the longer term.
What Labour is doing to address Violence Against Women and Girls
At the 2023 Labour Party Conference, Jess Phillips MP, now Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls, commented that violence against women and girls is the greatest threat to women’s equality.
The Labour Government has committed to halve violence against women and girls within ten years. Recently-announced new Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPO’s) and Protection Notices (DAPN’s) are a crucial advance. Women’s Aid commented that the pilot “had the potential to protect those affected but only if properly implemented and monitored”. The Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) welcomed the announcement noting it would have little impact without a “radical transformation in the implementation of these orders”.
Figures published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) showed that there were 123,100 households in England in temporary accommodation in the three months to the end of June – a rise of 16.3% on the same period the previous year.
Alongside a pledge to “go even further to fix these challenges by building the social and affordable homes we need”, the Deputy Prime Minister is also chairing a new inter-ministerial group dedicated to tackling the root causes of homelessness.
The need to support victims to stay in their homes
VAWG sector studies demonstrate that domestic abuse is one of these root causes of homelessness. Prevention includes consistent long-term funding to the specialist sector, implementation and enforcement of orders that assist survivors to remain in their homes where they wish to do so, plus widening Legal Aid to include those currently excluded.
We are in the early days of the new Labour Government. Action is needed here and now for those survivors and children trapped in the cycle of temporary accommodation and to implement the advice of the VAWG sector on prevention. It takes courage and resilience for survivors to speak about the abuse they have experienced. The point at which a women tries to leave an abusive relationship or to take action against the perpetrator is the stage at which she is most at risk of harm.
Unquestionably there are circumstances where it is essential for women and children to leave home to secure their safety. Refuges, VAWG sector organisations, Women’s Aid, the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) and others are critical to survivor safety and must be adequately funded.
Where a victim has had her options explained to her by a knowledgeable and experienced specialist advisor and chooses to remain in her home, all efforts need to focus on helping her to secure that choice. Injunctions must be enforced, every survivor must have access to legal advice and funding, protection orders need to be better used and social landlords must take action against perpetrators, who need to be held to account.
‘For housing providers it makes sound financial sense to help victims feel safe in their own home but this must be victim led’ Safe Lives/Gentoo
However, the onus should not be on a survivor to leave home to escape abuse, unless that is her informed choice. We must move away from placing the burden of escape from domestic abuse on survivors and instead hold perpetrators to account.
Instead of asking “why doesn’t she leave?” the question should be “why the hell should she?”