services

Disabled women escaping abuse – mobility and transport

Every woman’s journey to escape domestic abuse is unique, and many will not include formal services in their help-seeking. Responses should always aim to respect women’s rights and needs – and listen to their unique experiences.

But it can be useful to generalise – to some extent – to recognise shared experiences and similarities and differences. There are some commonalities, for example for older women, for women with or without children, for disabled women. Particular groups of women are less likely to use particular types of services – or less likely to seek formal help (or more likely to be turned away if they do).

Over 10% of women in the administrative data in this research were disabled. This includes being disabled in a wide range of ways – as well as by inadequate and inappropriate responses to their needs. Nearly 15,000 of the women who accessed support services due to domestic violence were recorded as disabled.

They may be disabled because of the abuse from the perpetrator – due to the impact on their physical or mental health.

In this research, Parveen was temporarily disabled by having broken her leg whilst staying in temporary accommodation: she had become trapped in a bathroom and was unable to summon any help, so ended up jumping out of a window. Beyond the typical difficulties of a train journey with a broken leg, she talked about how she was unable to reassure her one-year-old daughter by having her on her lap:

“I was on two crutches, so it was very difficult. My daughter wanted to be on my lap all the time, but I couldn’t – and I had bags and everything.”

When she arrived at her destination she was entirely dependent on being met:

“I didn’t see anyone at the train station – so the train staff helped me, and I was in a wheelchair. And then the refuge staff came after about five minutes.”

Many women have multi-stage journeys, and this research showed that journey segments by disabled women were significantly more likely to be by private transport rather than either public transport or the help of others (see the graph below), suggesting that disabled women who manage to escape abusive partners may need to have such independence.

This may reflect the additional barriers to disabled women’s mobility – such as difficulties in using public transport – and the independence necessary for their escapes.

In this research, Maud talked about how she felt her car was essential:

“I need transport because I’m not well – I can’t stand at a bus stop, I can’t stand at a train station; even if I’m sitting down the cold gets into me and I can’t move – because of the arthritis. So – I have to have a car – it’s not that I’m spoilt, it’s a necessity – it’s part of me, a car!”

Disabled women should not be assumed to be more dependent and needy – in fact, they are no more or less likely to self-refer to services than other women. But they are more likely to have longer engagement with services – being significantly more likely to stay in a service for 6 months or more. And services need to be responsive to their needs – there are only a few services which specifically respond to the needs of disabled women – like Stay Safe East, which is run by and for disabled people.

The wilful ignorance of a policy mismatch

Government often talks about evidence-based policy.

– and calls for further evidence and research from those who argue that policies or laws need to be changed.

But part of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 is a classic example of Government ignoring existing evidence – evidence that was presented to them in the consultation on developing the Act – and setting law and policy up to fail.

– to fail the tens of thousands of women and children who cross local authority boundaries to escape domestic violence and abuse.

As this research shows, the harms and losses caused by the perpetrator of domestic violence and abuse are often further compounded by how the state chooses to respond:

the services it does/doesn’t provide
the capacity and location of those services
the eligibility for those services – which often focuses on location

Despite the evidence Government received on the domestic violence journeys across local authority boundaries, it chose to devolve the duties in Part 4 of the Act to provide services and safe accommodation to Tier 1 local authorities. It chose to create a mismatch between the scale of service responses, and the functional scale that women and children actually need – and deserve.

In a new podcast conversation, the problems and harms that follow from this are explored – including the cliff-edges created at local authority boundaries that women and children frequently fall off.

And the problems are rendered invisible at the national scale by the lack of data that crosses these boundaries. Both needs assessments and provision decisions are confined within local authorities, and the data that used to exist England-wide (and which is used in this Journeyscapes research) is no longer aggregated nationally and made available for research or to inform policy. It is a wilful ignorance of the impact of devolving service responsibilities to the wrong scale.

As the podcast highlights:

“the losses and the harms that are caused by the abuser in intimate partner violence, are being compounded by the losses and the harms which are caused by the state.”

Stuck in limbo

Women and children’s journeys to escape domestic violence and abuse can be long, slow and difficult. The Women’s Journeyscapes research provides evidence of the long distances travelled, the multiple stages, and the complexities of time on the move.

It is also an issue of control: women often have very little control over when and where they move and whether they can resettle.

Beyond the force of the abuse from the perpetrator, there is the force of the systems and agencies women and children have to access for help and support; and they can find themselves forced to relocate more often than they need to, and forced to stay put when they need to relocate.

Women and children may access a women’s refuge, and benefit from the specialist and peer support there… but then find that they get stuck in limbo – unable to move on because of the lack of suitable housing and support.

This not only stalls their recovery journey, it means they are taking up a space in a refuge that another family desperately needs.

Women’s Aid’s latest annual audit estimates that more referrals to women’s refuges in England are turned away than those which are able to be accepted; with 11,305 women[1] supported in a refuge and 17,028 referrals declined in 2023-24.

And this is in a context where Women’s Aid records that actual refuge spaces have increased (from 3,935 in 2019-20 to 4,551 in 2023-24). However, they note that the vacancies recorded on the Routes to Support system have decreased in the same period: from 10,340[2] to 7,550)…

So, what’s going on?

A significant factor is women and children staying longer in refuges…. Not just because they need to, but because of a lack of options to leave: being stuck in limbo.

The Women’s Journeyscapes research used administrative data from 2003-2011 to devise a formula for the types and capacity of domestic abuse services needed, and found a mean length of stay in accommodation services of 3.4 months. This would mean that one refuge room/flat could accommodate over 3.2 families per year. Stays were longer in London – nearly 6 months – so that only 2 families a year could be supported in a London refuge space. However, the latest figures from Women’s Aid show how much worse the situation has become, with the mean length of stay approaching 5 months – and individual women may stay much longer. Longer stays reduce the capacity of the refuges around the country – down to below 2.5 families per refuge space per year.

No wonder the vacancies available are going down – cutting off an option for escape and support to thousands of women and children trying to leave domestic violence each year.

More refuge spaces – providing specialist and peer support for women and children – are desperately needed; as well as a whole infrastructure of other kinds of support. But we also need timely housing options for moving on from women’s refuges, so that women and children can resettle and rebuild their lives after abuse.

[1] Women’s Aid 2025, Table. C10. Page 75

[2] Women’s Aid 2025, Table. C6. Page 74

Women’s Aid. (2025) The Annual Audit 2025, Bristol: Women’s Aid. https://www.womensaid.org.uk/annual-audit-2025/

Local elections – what is local about domestic violence?

As we approach local elections in England and Wales on 2^nd May 2024, local and national politicians are setting the priorities for local authorities: for the funding they receive and spend – and the services they spend it on.

Where are responses to domestic violence and abuse in these priorities?

With many local authorities struggling to cover their statutory duties, such as social care and child protection, and facing loud criticism over bin collections and potholes, where do domestic abuse services fit into their plans?

These plans matter – from advice and information services, to specialist refuges and accommodation: all these are services that national government has devolved to local decision-making.

But domestic violence and abuse isn’t local. Not only are men violent and abusive to their women partners in every local authority in the country… but, to escape that threat, many women and children cross local authority boundaries to seek help and support – as well as safety.

The maps show the domestic violence journeys in one year to services for just five cities, as women (often with children) travel to or from Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth, Southampton and Birmingham. They show women having to leave their local authority to get the help they need.

One year of domestic violence journeys to and from Manchester to services

One year of domestic violence journeys to and from Newcastle upon Tyne to services

One year of domestic violence journeys to and from Plymouth to services

One year of domestic violence journeys to and from Southampton to services

One year of domestic violence journeys to and from Birmingham to services

But women and children can only make such journeys if the services exist.

Local politicians may pledge to fund – or to cut funds to – domestic violence services, as part of seeking votes in the May elections. It’s a patchwork of separate – unconnected – decisions. And decisions that do not only affect local voters – but affect the tens of thousands of women and children who end up needing services somewhere else – not in their original local area.

It’s an ongoing mismatch between the scale of need and the scale of response – further cemented in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.

We need services everywhere, because perpetrators are abusive to their partners or ex-partners everywhere; but we need a network across the whole country – not at risk from hundreds of separate local cuts and local priorities.

Do the uncounted not count?

Women on the move due to domestic abuse are often hiding. They shouldn’t have to, of course…

But if not enough is happening to tackle the perpetrator, then women and children frequently have to move away – to try and keep safe. If the authorities will not prevent the abuser threatening her – and if he won’t change – then women uproot themselves and their children and try to disappear.

They may have to keep hidden for months, for years, forever – breaking contact with work, school, friends, family…

And hiding from the perpetrator also keeps them hidden from other aspects of ordinary life. It also means that they slip between the cracks of all kinds of administrative processes – falling off waiting lists, missing crucial appointments, losing their eligibility for services.

They are also uncounted in another way. All the social surveys in the UK sample the settled population – using the Royal Mail’s Postcode Address File – and so this excludes people in insecure, shared, and communal accommodation. Women on the move due to domestic violence may be in temporary accommodation for years – they may never get back to properly settled accommodation.

So the key surveys that are relied upon for prevalence of domestic violence and abuse (the Crime Surveys in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) systematically exclude anyone on the move or in unsettled accommodation. They exclude the people most acutely affected by the domestic abuse that they claim to count.

There was discussion of the problem at the RadStats conference in London on Saturday; and there is some wider acknowledgement – the Inclusive Data Taskforce (IDTF) reported in 2021 on the issue, and the Office for National Statistics has recently published research with 40 women on temporary accommodation due to domestic abuse.

But this doesn’t fill the gaps – there’s nothing more substantial to address the chronically uncounted; and the implications of them being missing from statistics. The supposed prevalence of domestic abuse – measured by the Crime Surveys – is widely reported; but it is barely acknowledged that the figure is potentially badly skewed by the missing women on the move.

And the missing are predominantly women – not only are women more likely to experience domestic violence and abuse, but when men experience domestic violence and abuse they are less likely to relocate and therefore exit the settled population sampling frame. So the prevalence for men and women are differentially skewed – meaning that the figures just cannot be relied upon.

So – from the assumption of only surveying the settled population, comes distorted statistics and significant exclusions.

And it matters – whenever the supposed prevalence of domestic violence and abuse from Crime Surveys is used to assess need, or make decisions about whether to provide services – and services for whom – the basis is flawed… and the decisions are flawed. And the message seems to be that the uncounted – women and children on the move due to domestic abuse – just don’t count…

‘Tain’t What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It)

Social science research investigates ‘topics’ that are actually the lived experience of people. Whilst all research into people’s lives involves their participation in some respect (whether or not they know about it), it is the engagement (or not) with issues of power, social justice and inequality that matters when thinking about ‘participatory’ research.

Academic research supported by an institution will need to consider the ethics of people’s participation – what do they know about the research? how are they being treated? will they benefit? is there a risk of harm? But rather than a one-off consideration of ‘ethics’, social research should ensure ongoing self-questioning of the quality of interactions from the start of thinking about the work right the way through.

Taking on board these interactions, researchers may work with community, voluntary or third sector groups, and the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) has published a series of guides about working with voluntary and community organisations.

The guides consider research about health, disability and care, through to austerity, violence, and creative collaborations. They ask questions about the way such research is done – to draw on the experience of groups and organisations, but not in a one-way extractive relationship. Community groups will have hard-won insights and experience – knowledge that may not be in the academic literature. They will have ideas about which areas need further research – and which just need political and practical action (not yet more research!).

The guide on working with groups opposing violence against women draws on this research project – highlighting key aspects of research design; and providing suggestions for how to carry out further research.

It’s about committing to the process of how such research is done – not just what you do…. but the way that you do it….

That’s what gets results!!

Shared space – Shared food – Shared belonging

Where can women escaping domestic violence find a sense of belonging?

The actions of an abusive partner or husband often force you out of a sense of belonging at home – even if you don’t actually leave.

As Gloria said in an interview for this research:

“He would bring his friends, and have fun – while I was just stuck in the bedroom; I was living in the bedroom – he didn’t want to see me in the lounge. […] So, to me – what was the point of torturing my soul in that house? I might as well leave and go and stay under a bridge where there’s nobody there to torment me.”

And if you leave, you may end up staying with friends or family (if it’s safe), stay in temporary accommodation, or go to a women’s refuge where you don’t know anybody.

You may have to share kitchens, bathrooms in the refuge – even if you don’t, you will be sharing other rooms and other space. That can be difficult – unchosen communal living – but it can also be a place of connection and support. Support for yourself, as you meet other women who have been through similar experiences; and also support for children – friendships, playrooms, and childworkers.

The shared space can become a positive space – a space of shared belonging .

In the participatory photography groupwork for this research, Shalom shared images from shared food in the refuge:

“Last week, me and some of the ladies – I went to show them Brixton, because they had never been – so we bought these crabs – because she knew how to cook them really well.”

“And these are mackerel – grilled mackerel – and these are like baked sweet potatoes, but they are a different kind – not the regular reddish kind – they are a bit longer, a bit tougher, and when you bake them they don’t just fall apart like the red ones do, you know. And that’s rice, and we had the giant prawns in the rice; and then broccoli.”

“We didn’t have any special thing to eat them, so we just cracked them open – we found a way around them, with hands – with teeth – with spoons; and then we found a way. It was really good – we had a laugh! We had so much – we couldn’t eat all of it! It tasted so good!”

“We didn’t plan it – it was a very random thing; but I think we’re going to plan it next time for the house. We are thinking that we should make it like a house thing; because this was like very random – I went to show them Brixton and then we went into the shops, and they wanted fruit, and then we ended up seeing the crabs – crabs! – so we got the crabs, and then the other things – and cooked it together.”

“We just laid everything out – so we could eat; and a lot of dancing and singing! – while we were cooking. It was a lot of fun!”

Opening the Door towards a new life

For women who have experienced domestic abuse, the front door is a powerful image of whether they feel safe or not. Living with an abusive partner, they feel unsafe to go into the place that they had called home. The danger is inside – not in the outside world – and home feels like a prison.

As Elizabeth said in this research, after she had left her violent husband:

“I’m in a different world – completely! I’m free. I feel like I’ve come out of prison in a sense; where I was completely dictated to – now I’m free! If I want to go down town – I go! If I want to stay out all day – I can. I’m not controlled – I’ve got the control; I’ve taken the control back!”

The front door became an image of independence – as Elizabeth said:

“I’ve got my own front door – so what if I can’t afford the curtains! [laughs] I’m safe – you know – I’ve got my life back.”

Having left the violent relationship – a front door you feel safe to go through is a definition of a true home. As Julien Rosa said:

“You don’t need to be scared to go in – you just go in. You know, when I was back in [the relationship] I used to be scared to go in – I just stood there. So – that’s a big difference – to be happy, to be relaxed – it’s incredible.”

The participatory creative work in this project provided time and space for women to communicate such experiences. Women in the groups drew ‘maps’ of their journeys, and took photographs to explore the twists and turns of their routes.

This short video shows some of their images and captions about opening the door towards a new life. Their images show closed doors, gates, blocked views, difficult routes and strange angles that mirror the disorientation of abuse. But they also show a way forward and the hopefulness of a way through.

Women saw the support of others as part of opening the door towards a new life – and wanted to communicate that way forward to other women escaping abuse.

Journeyscapes – the scale of the need and the scale of the response

The concept of Journeyscapes in this research is that the response to domestic abuse needs should be at a functional scale and capacity – a practical and accessible infrastructure for women and children. That should be a fundamental responsibility of the state – of Government – in response to the human rights violation of violence against women.

Whilst Government persists in devolving responsibility to local authorities – not least in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 – women and children in their tens of thousands are crossing these local authority boundaries to seek help. Yet again, the scale of the response does not match the scale of the need.

A new open-access article [1] from this research shows that the regional scale in England is much more self-contained than local authorities in terms of accessing services; but this is not currently a scale of service commissioning. The example of the region of Yorkshire and The Humber shows women relocating to access a service due to domestic abuse; and many relocating again when they leave the service: either to another local authority in the region, or to elsewhere in England.

Domestic violence help-seeking journeys from local authorities in Yorkshire and The Humber

The churn of all these journeys is striking.

But, looking at the flows at the regional scale, rather than the local authority scale within a region, shows a different pattern. Though there are clearly domestic violence journeys leaving each region, the majority stay within the same region.

Domestic violence help-seeking journeys to and from English regions

The journeys may be forced by the threat of the abuser – or by the policies and (non) availability of services at the point of seeking help. Some journeys would not be necessary if the support was better, and if perpetrators were held responsible for their abuse. But the reality is that these journeys are made.

If Government wanted to meet the needs of these journeys, then it would ensure that there were no additional barriers put in place across local authority boundaries: that the state wasn’t making anything worse. A rights-based, needs-led service provision would plan at the national scale for sufficient and sustainable service capacity, without any access restrictions in terms of past, present, or future location.

A human rights argument would be for all options to be possible without any additional harm or losses being caused by the state in terms of policies, laws, and services.

As Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the UK, the state should have duties to minimise individuals’ losses, and support their rights and resettlement. Women and children should be enabled to journey as far as they need, and stay as near as they can, with the role of the state authorities being to journeyscape (by law, policy, and provision) an otherwise potentially hostile terrain.

[1] Bowstead, Janet C. 2022. “Journeyscapes: The Regional Scale of Women’s Domestic Violence Journeys.” People, Place and Policy. doi:10.3351/ppp.2022.8332428488.

Location – Location – Location

It matters where domestic abuse services are – of course it does.

The location of domestic abuse services – whether women’s refuges or non-accommodation services – affects whether and how women can access the services and receive the support they need and deserve.

Whilst non-accommodation support can include workers travelling to where women and children are – sometimes called “floating support” with the idea that it floats to where it is needed, rather than expecting individuals to travel to the support – accommodation is in a specific location.

So, where should such services be?

As part of developing an ETHICAL response to service provision for domestic violence against women, Location is a key element to consider (alongside Eligibility, Type, Holistic, Independence, Capacity, and Accessibility). The location of services must enable both staying put and journeys – including return journeys where appropriate. Location is about women’s fundamental eligibility as a survivor of abuse – violence against women as a human rights violation – to go and be wherever is best.

Technical Paper on a formula for the Location of services in England

A technical paper on developing a formula for the Location of domestic abuse services in England has just been published and is available here. It should be read alongside the technical paper on Type and Capacity of domestic abuse services.

The main conclusion is that there should be sufficient accommodation and non-accommodation provision across the country in all types of places, and with no location exclusion criteria or rationing. Despite this formula being based on increasingly historical data of expressed demand, provision of accommodation bedspaces as recorded by Women’s Aid Routes to Support[1] is still below the required minimum level indicated by this formula (and by the Council of Europe recommendation[2]). Overall, the actual count of 4,332 family bedspaces in England in 2022 is below both the minimum from this formula (5,369) and the minimum recommended by the Council of Europe (5,656). And the shortage is more acute in some regions compared to others.

The graph shows that only the West Midlands region currently has higher provision than the minimum of the formula from this research, and that whilst provision in London meets the population-based Council of Europe recommendation, it does not meet the higher minimum calculated by this research by taking into account the distinctiveness of London in terms of length of stay in services.

The initial stage for a policy towards an ETHICAL service provision would be to fund the different types of service up to the minimum capacity. Thinking and planning regionally would be more functional than the current narrow focus on local authorities. After identifying the shortfall per region, actual provision should be in all types of places (all types of local authorities) – but strictly hosted by them and not in any way limited to women and children from that local authority. Planning and funding must be at the scale of women and children’s domestic violence help-seeking and journeys: scale meaning both providing sufficient capacity and provision at the appropriate geographical scale.

[1] Women’s Aid. 2022. Domestic Abuse Provision: Routes to Support. Bristol: Women’s Aid Federation of England. https://www.womensaid.org.uk/domestic-abuse-provision-data-routes-to-support/.

[2] Council of Europe. 2011. Explanatory Report to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. https://rm.coe.int/1680a48903.