@nosafeguardingadults
So grateful to everyone including existing services and Posie trying to help but don't think enough will ever happen because real solution is safe places to live that privacy and dignity of own safe space and no shared with male or female. People here understanding when women scared of males in their space and say women shouldn't be forced to retraumatise but if traumatised by any strangers, any other humans, told you are problem and ungrateful and just get over it and then no help and no way out of violence and abuse.
Be ok maybe if refuges just temporary short term emergency but now it's like homeless housing for months and maybe longer. Problem also is most existing services so good and wonderful but some are not and there are some bad people in them. If your local service is bad then you have no support. When councils don't do legal duties to help there's no one to support you with that so no way out. Someone meant to support kept not answering phone, replied to messages only week later then again a week later and nothing getting done to reply to councils and then window of opportunity to leave goes. Then when you try to ask for more help, service closes ranks and says they can't help you and leaves you with no help. Maybe was too busy to help but instead of being honest lied and told managers she was doing support she hadn't done. If been honest was too busy, still no support but at least not extra trauma on top of abuse.
Sorry to post this. Definitely one hundred percent it's not most services but it is like that with some so current system not good enough and so anything new should be good as more options for women needing help.
Big problem is often nowhere safe after refuge so no point single sex refuge when after its openly nothing to do with trans mixed sex housing including men out of prison so end up sometimes living in same space as violent abusers. Better not to leave in first place and if no help for some women especially no children or grown up children, should be honesty because more dangerous to leave then have to go back.
Nosafeguardingadults you have been posting insights most of us on this thread don’t have. I think when you haven’t had a lot of take-up, it’s because none of us really have a clue how to even start addressing the issues.
Clearly there is a huge and unrecognised need for single-sex provision after leaving a refuge. Your suggestion that if Posie’s refuge plan doesn’t come to fruition, the money goes towards post-refuge care is a good one, although obviously a drop in the ocean.
Equally serious is the issue of councils and some existing domestic abuse services acting as abusers themselves. The relationship between those providing help and those needing the help is obviously an unequal one, and unequal power relations lend themselves very easily to abusive dynamics. Clearly some service providers have not managed to steer clear of becoming abusers themselves, even if the abuse superficially looks different to that perpetrated by abusive male partners.
It does highlight that it is not necessarily a recipe for providing the best refuge service to listen to existing experts in refuge provision.
Clearly there is a need to take on board the experiences of abused women, whether they accessed help or not, in addition to experiences of service providers. I am obviously not saying it is a simple matter of running a poll of abused women, but this thread has revealed a notion among some people, that self-styled experts may not be questioned. It is revealing of a very top-down approach to what abused people’s needs are, with little room for bottom-up informed care.