Breaking Down Barriers

February 4, 2022

We are taking some time to reflect and share one of the flagship BCWA projects that has been running for the last five years: Breaking Down Barriers. The project set…

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We are taking some time to reflect and share one of the flagship BCWA projects that has been running for the last five years: Breaking Down Barriers. The project set out to remove barriers to accessing domestic abuse support services for young women and girls, women with complex needs, no recourse to public funds, and to raise awareness through training.

Learnings From the Project

Creating the Young People’s service has been revolutionary and allowed us to begin to tackle early stages of domestic abuse through creating awareness around healthy relationships in young people. These young women require time and patience and often need to unlearn behaviours or ideas they have around unhealthy relationships, which is best achieved through combined group work and one-to-one support.

Our experience with service users with complex needs highlighted the need for support on an ever-changing, day to day basis and brought home a better understanding of the non-linear nature of their support needs.

Having a dedicated NRPF support worker has shown us just how vulnerable this service user group is and how important it is to retain a well-funded, specialist service for women without recourse to public funds. The additional barriers present for this group around language, poverty legal and cultural issues need much more work in the future to tackle.

Conclusions

Our Young People’s service is running at maximum capacity which highlights the need for expanding support for this vulnerable group. It is vital that we continue to build relationships with external organisations who support young people and continue to establish ourselves as a safe service that is welcoming to anyone of any age. Further funding would also allow us to grow our service and take on more service users who may be turned away from other refuges.

The overriding message is that the complexity of the lives of women with complex needs, the long-term impact of the trauma they have experienced and their vulnerability to further adversity, means that there are no quick fixes. For many of these women it has taken them more than six months to receive their indefinite leave to remain. The NRPF refuge spaces are always in demand and BCWA will continue to advocate for better support for this vulnerable group.

It is crucial that we continue to provide training to organisations and awareness to the general public about all kinds of domestic abuse, now more than ever since the Covid-19 pandemic.

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