Women/girls Being Excluded from Last Resort & Emergency Support Services - Resource Thread

[gardenbird48]

MichelleofZe mentioned this earlier on the Allison Bailey thread:

Several years ago it was pointed out officially that refuges needed to be asking and recording consultation with service users and not service providers who had their hands tied by funding requirements, or again by employees who had direct personal interest in achieving a non female-centred outcome.

By coincidence this morning I saw this tweet (below).

Just got an update from a homelessness charity I volunteer with, and apparently they've had to accommodate multiple young women who've withdrawn from emergency hostels due to an "immediate risk to their safety." This is because those hostels have mixed facilities now.

twitter.com/psycholophie/status/1361226492651442177

This is how the above situation plays out, extremely vulnerable girls can't access support and are literally out on the streets because the people being paid to help them are not remotely considering safeguarding or their needs. In fact, they are creating such a dangerous environment that they have to leave.

The very organisations set up and funded to meet the needs of some of the people that are most in danger in society are failing them and compounding all of their problems.

How many other organisations are becoming not fit for purpose for women and girls? Add any examples you find from homeless charities/rape shelters etc here.

Thank you for sharing this, the thread on the link is very well worth reading.

As someone on the thread says: in Bristol in the 90s, single sex hostels were created because women were so afraid of the mixed sex hostels and what happened to women in them that they were sleeping in the woods rather than use the hostels.

The same woods women locally were afraid to walk or exercise in, those women were resorting to sleeping in at night as safer than council provided hostels.

And now we've got mens shelters and mixed sex shelters, and again women are left in crisis. The issues in mens shelters must be addressed without taking women's resources and spaces as a solution.

Thanks for this.

I'm not a big Twitter user because it's a shitpit a lot of the time, but I'm having a look at the thread now.

Appalling lack of safeguarding and consideration of the needs of women and girls.

I think there is some misunderstanding of how the sector works going on here. Often emergency shelters can be little more than some church hall that's been opened up by volunteers with spaces for sleeping bags on the floor just to get people in out of the cold. Some of them are more formally run by charities and there is a range of mixed and single sex provision. They are almost always dormiteries/shared rooms (which would be single sex).

In addition to this there are direct access hostels, which take people off the streets, but some may also take referrals from other agencies. In most of these people have their own room but share facilities. Some are single sex, some are mixed sex, although there is usually some seperation - in the one I lived in there were different floors for men and women but communal space was shared. They are staffed 24/7.

People can end up stuck in direct access hostels for a long time - up to 2/3 years in some cases, or they are referred to a second stage hostel with lower support levels where they can stay for an equally long time. Again some are single sex, some cater to specific groups such as single mums, and probably the majority in London at least are mixed sex. And then not's necessarily unpopular amongst all women. Lots of these hostels allow overnight guests in rooms for example, although usually with some rules attached. Lots of women have male partners they might want to spend the night with, or male relatives or friends they'd like to have round to visit. This in effect is someone's home for a couple of years, a lot of women don't want to be told they basically can't have a relationship because they are stuck in a hostel.

The main problem facing the system is lack of provision and lack of move-on accommdation due to the chronic shortage of social housing and the inability of benefits to meet private sector rents in many areas. There needs to be increased provision across the board, including single sex, but insisting on single sex would not be popular with a lot of women who live in hostels.

@Ereshkigalangcleg

Appalling lack of safeguarding and consideration of the needs of women and girls.

Yes, it does look like this @Ereshkigalangcleg.

I'm having a very good read around about this. I do hope this thread can focus on this specific issue.

Good to see this being shared here. What has happened to safe provision for vulnerable women is an ongoing scandal The flanneling and whataboutery trying to justify it by organisations who should know better is vile. The regulatory capture of this sector is a disgrace.

The regulatory capture of this sector is a disgrace.

Mixed sex hostels have been a thing for decades. I lived in one in the early 90s. It's nothing to do with Stonewall or some trans plot.

I completely agree jj. Mixed sex hostels have been around for decades, often with single sex sleeping arrangements though. It would be good if there were hostels for mixed sex and single sex and preferably taking into account what the service users prefer.

What is not ok though, is taking away the single sex because some service providers have decided that single sex means mixed sex and if no one complains then it is ok. And to make sure no one complains, they just never investigate why some people don't use their services...

@persistentwoman

Good to see this being shared here. What has happened to safe provision for vulnerable women is an ongoing scandal The flanneling and whataboutery trying to justify it by organisations who should know better is vile. The regulatory capture of this sector is a disgrace.

I think that the current attention being paid to regulatory capture is extremely important.

Why is this happening now? When did it start? What's been going on since 2008, 2014, etc, and who were/are the drivers and where has the money been moving to and from?

And, where has the safeguarding been?

I believe we know many of the answers but formal inquiries and legal hearings are clearly the only way forward now.

@jj1968

The regulatory capture of this sector is a disgrace.

Mixed sex hostels have been a thing for decades. I lived in one in the early 90s. It's nothing to do with Stonewall or some trans plot.

This particular incident however relates ro an area that had single-sex provisions for homeless women that are now mixed-sex.

The person raising the issue has not blamed transgender people for this.

Thanks for sharing this. Women and girls at the bottom of the heap, as usual. This is why we need feminism.

This particular incident however relates ro an area that had single-sex provisions for homeless women that are now mixed-sex.

Sure and I'm glad action was taken, my feeling is that nightshelter accommodation, which is usually very short term, should be single sex. But the problem is what happens when all the nightshelters are full which often happens especially in sub-zero temperatures? If someone just opens up a space and says look you can bed down here then does that mean people should be left on the streets if they are the wrong sex? And since most rough sleepers are male then that would probably mean women left out. Are they safer out there? That's the problem of working in an environment with chronic underfunding which is what I was trying to get across really. It's not a matter of what's safe, it's about juggling risk and just trying to keep people alive.

''Woman raped in homeless shelter as campaigners call for more support for the vulnerable''
www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/woman-raped-homeless-shelter-campaigners-19065205

If you google 'woman raped in hostel' to look for this article, you are faced with links from the US and Asutralia, about youth and homeless hostels.

Warning - awful story

this was an unusual case that is still on its way to trial (scheduled for May this year) as I understand:

The victim was living in a homeless hostel and was murdered and cut in half by the person living in the room next door.

The newspaper article contains a picture of the man who transported the alleged murderer and dead body to dispose of it in the Forest of Dean but no pictures of the person charged with the murder and cutting up the body.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8339533/Tragic-past-torso-woods-victim-dropped-university-killed.html

We (women) are going to have to raise money for women’s shelters all over again aren’t we

In the current climate, TRAs will be able to access them anyway, against the will of female service users.