Abstract
The dismantling of the welfare state across the United Kingdom (and indeed a number of other Western industrialised democracies, such as Canada and the United States) and the reductions to welfare provisions and entitlements are having a detrimental impact on women’s equality and safety. Towers and Walby argue that the recent cuts to welfare provision in the United Kingdom, particularly for women’s services, could lead to increased levels of violence for women and girls. This paper makes the argument that female victims of domestic abuse experience violence on two levels: first, at the intimate/personal level through their relationship with an abuser and, second, at a structural level, through the state failing to provide adequate protection and provision for women who have experienced violence in intimate relationships. Using a specific example of post-violence community services delivered to both the children of women who have experienced domestic violence and the women themselves, this paper draws on empirical research carried out in 2010–2011 with London-based third-sector and public sector organisations delivering the Against Violence and Abuse Project ‘Community Group Programme’. We argue that the lack of services for women involved in, or exiting, a violent relationship can amount to state-sanctioned violence, if funding is withheld, or indeed, stretched to breaking point.
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Notes
While the 2015 election saw all parties promising to make violence against women (including domestic violence specifically) a priority, the 2015 Conservative Government is set to make further cuts across all public services as outlined in the Summer 2015 budget, with a continued focus on localism as a policy practice, and a specific target on welfare and support programmes (HM Treasury, 2015).
Most of the resources available to prevent domestic violence and to deal with the aftermath focus on female victims, and usually emphasise the gendered nature of abuse. Most refuges in the United Kingdom, for example, are for women only. This excludes not only male victims of domestic violence, who may well be fathers or carers, but also teenage sons of women, who are often refused entry to domestic violence shelters. It is outside the remit of this paper to comment substantively on whether and how this situation might be addressed. Most of the funding available to engage abused partners is largely available to women. Indeed, it could well be argued that fathers who experience domestic violence—in the context of either a homo- or a heterosexual relationship—may face greater difficulties in accessing appropriate services. We feel that this issue warrants further attention, as there is little empirical evidence to document the difficulties fathers-as-victims experience, and the impact it may have on their identities as fathers.
MARACs are regular local meetings where information about high-risk domestic abuse victims (those at risk of murder or serious harm) is shared between local agencies.
Bowstead (2015) points out that provision of refuges and non-statutory services at a local authority level is particularly vulnerable to cuts because this type of service can be constructed as ‘discretionary’. Fitzgerland and Lupton (2014) argue that in London at least, it is these ‘discretionary’ services that have been hit hard as a result of the funding cuts.
The Domestic Violence and Victims Act 2004 introduced the clause that where either parent lets a vulnerable person (often a child) be a victim of violence, both parents can be held responsible.
Full findings of the evaluation are available here: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=evaluation-of-the-community-group-programme-for-children-and-young-people-final-report.pdf&site=387 [last accessed 3 November 2015].
See: http://www.avaproject.org.uk/ [last accessed 29 January 2016].
Email communications with AVA in July of 2015 about the status of the groups revealed that funding for the project had run out and there was no clear oversight about which groups were still running and in what capacity.
Because many of the groups drew on public sector workers from across different services (e.g., social services, children’s services, domestic violence refuges), job cuts across different areas in local Councils often meant trained facilitators were made redundant, or forced to pick up extra work as a result of other staff redundancies, meaning they no longer had capacity to facilitate or deliver groups.
The Big Society agenda was introduced by the Prime Minister during the Coalition Government in an effort to increase civil society participation. See recent research from the Civil Exchange for more on this defunct agenda, and for a more comprehensive overview of the aims and objectives put forward by David Cameron (Civil Exchange, 2015).
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Sanders-McDonagh, E., Neville, L. & Nolas, SM. from pillar to post: understanding the victimisation of women and children who experience domestic violence in an age of austerity. Fem Rev 112, 60–76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2015.51
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2015.51