Green Doctors Newsletter

The women and girls paying the price for the cost of living

This blog post has been reshared with permission, using the original blog by Nimat Jaffer, VAWG Programme Manager at The London Community Foundation.

As we approach the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, our VAWG Programme Manager shares how the organisations fighting the fight are also battling with the cost-of-living crisis, leaving vulnerable women more hesitant to flee abusive situations.

We’ve all seen the headlines… “how to cope with the cost-of-living crisis” including “top tips to save money as energy bills and cost of living rise” and “UK inflation moves back up with the cost-of-living crisis”. We also know that violence against women and girls, also known as VAWG, alongside the recent global health crisis further facilitated opportunities for violence and abuse. So where does this leave the victim-survivors of violence against women and girls, and the grassroots organisations that support them?

In September 2022, 32% of 41 richly diverse partner organisations in our VAWG Grassroots Fund, supported by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) reported the cost of-living crisis as their primary concern. When we consider the nature of their work – which includes safety planning and supporting the recovery of abused and exploited women and girls – this is significant.

Living in destitution

Sister System, who support care leavers, have found that the young women they support are struggling with attending workshops and appointments as affording travel is difficult. “Our community is feeling more isolated and alone, unable to engage because of the struggles around poverty that they are dealing with. We are trying to mitigate this as much as possible.” The Kurdish Middle Eastern Women’s Organisation (KMEWO) also explain that women asylum seekers and those with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) struggle with the little allowance they are given. “The women we support report extreme poverty, difficulty in paying bills, not being able to meet essential needs.”

These changes have led these organisations, among others like Nour DV, WAND UK and Stay Safe East, to set up their own hardship fund and, in some cases, use their free reserves to provide essentials. This includes paying for basics like food, travel, electricity bill debt, mattresses, and winter clothes for children.

Rising costs have also resulted in an increase in referrals to these organisations, and reliance on foodbanks, but even here – there are struggles. Flashy Wings Ministry, an African-led organisation, reports that food banks tend to provide foods which the women and children they support wouldn’t usually eat. They are working hard to seek funds to help them buy more culturally appropriate foods, such as dried fish which can last for months and be used to make a variety of dishes.

East European Resource Centre offers advocacy, legal advice and therapeutic support to survivors of domestic abuse. They issued more food vouchers in August alone than the previous six months. Similarly, they have found that food banks generally supply processed foods. With the majority of their beneficiaries coming from an East European background, where the cultural norm means home-cooking meals from scratch using fresh ingredients, many of the women and families they support would often rather go without eating.

The food bank, WAND UK, not only provides food and essentials for the local community but helps identify women suffering domestic abuse. They have recently noted a link between women accessing the food bank and a breakdown in relationships, alongside financial hardships. Unlike Eastern European Resource Centre, they highlight that microwaveable meals are actually in very high demand, as cooking with an oven or hob has become too expensive. This has also had a knock-on effect on the organisation themselves as they now need to source more microwaveable meals, and a bigger fridge-freezer to store them safely. These varying requirements demonstrate the need for a tailored approach, rather than a one-size-fits-all.

A change in services

It’s therefore no surprise that reports from the VAWG Grassroots Fund organisations show a direct connection between the cost-of-living crisis and an increase in demand for services from these specialists, especially organisations supporting women from ethnic backgrounds.

Maa Shanti, who support South Asian single mothers, share “We are worried about women fearing deportation who are therefore not accessing the life-saving support they need.” Even with this barrier, the organisation has reported an increase in referrals including previous service users returning for advocacy on money, housing and benefits.

The way in which support is being delivered has also shifted. The team at Faith Regen Foundation would normally raise awareness of financial abuse, instead they are also now completing actual budget plans with women. Similarly, Nour DV are spending a substantial amount of time making applications for individual grants so that women and their families have money for essentials. In response to seeing more victims of domestic abuse citing the cost-of-living crisis as a factor in not leaving abusive circumstances, The Sharan Project have also applied for the NatWest Circle Fund, which supports victims of economic abuse.

Weighing up the worries

KMEWO, Aanchal Women’s Aid and Respeito have shared that the decision to leave abusive relationships is further impacted by statutory services, such as access to housing and welfare benefits.

Respeito explain that “Childcare costs prevent women from accessing employment and subsequently economic independence. This means women rely mostly on welfare, which can be a long process due to the difficulties created by statutory services for clients’ representation and advocacy. The lack of access to Universal Credit due to lengthy processing time and language barriers means vulnerable women are left with little choice but to return to their perpetrators.”

It is important to recognise that while violence against women and girls is most often perpetrated by men, it is not exclusive to men. There are increased reports of inter-generational abuse, especially of older women living with their children, who find themselves subjected to domestic servitude and, often, who cannot speak English – leaving them trapped in an unhappy and lonely life.

The Violence Against Women and Girls Grassroots Fund has taught us that the type of violence that a woman or girl experiences comes with its own intersectionality, often connected to poverty, conflict, tradition and so called ‘honour’. When this is added to the dynamics related to race, culture, community, religion, and language barriers, the challenges become layered. These challenges are further impacted by the pressures on statutory services, the media’s influence, and legislative changes.

Without the practical intervention from these organisations, a victim-survivor’s chance of recovery is at risk because all of these factors affect their recovery and create a complexity that is often hard to capture. But this is also what makes these organisations the specialists that they are.

Organisations like our VAWG Grassroots Fund cohort are seeing the impact of the cost-of-living crisis first-hand. Your donation to our Together for London appeal will make sure these women and girls can continue to get the support they need this winter.

WAND UK IN SUPPORT OF ALL NATIONAL CAMPAINGS

 As an organization we believe in Equality and Justice.

We embrace The Black Lives Matter Movement as it works towards recognizing that Black Lives Matter.

 We will contribute towards global recognition of the tenets of the Movement.

Black History Month 

Black History Month usually takes place every October but we would like to
demonstrate our support to black lives everyday.
It’s a time to celebrate, educate and talk about the experience of Black people in the UK.

The month that was originally founded to recognise the contributions that people of
African and Caribbean backgrounds in UK over many generations, has now, expanded
to include the history of not just African and Caribbean people but black people in
general.
Black history month was first launched in London in the 1980s, where the aim was for
the local community to challenge racism and educate themselves and others about the
British history that was not taught in schools. Throughout history, black people have
always been present in the UK but there has been a lack of representation in the
history books.
Just to give you an example of this, in the paintings of Henry the Eighth you can see
black people in the background, but we have no record of who they were and what
they did. Queen Victoria even had a black goddaughter who’s mother was a Nigerian
Princess called Omoba, she was given to the queen when her parents died after being
captured by slave traders, her name was later changed to Sarah Forbes-Bonetta.
We need to remember the forgotten people who have helped to shape the UK.
We would like to promote the BBC who has launched two new online series – Alt
History and Black to Life – that take a look back at black British history that has been
forgotten: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48786804

This past year has seen demonstrations in Britain and around the world in response to
the death of George Floyd, a black man who died while being stopped by police in
America.

For us, we will be using this platform at WAND to be including and promoting
everything from signing petitions and joining demonstrations to donating to bail-out
funds and following Black community organisations. And then in the longer term;
educating and learning how we can support so that we can become better allies or just
generally further the cause. We hope the list below provides a useful starting point for
both of these, but it is just a starting point; we will be updating it, so please get in
touch with any new suggestions or if you feel we’ve missed something.
Charities and funds
Black Girls Hike
Black Girls Hike is a non-profit organisation which aims to make the UK countryside more
inclusive and provide a safe space for Black women to explore the outdoors with like-minded
individuals. Their regular hiking events also place emphasis on wellbeing and sisterhood.

They are currently raising money to host Healing Retreats for Black women across the UK.
Stop Hate UK
Stop Hate UK is a charity which provides independent support to those affected by hate crime
and challenge all forms of discrimination. Set up in direct response to the murder of Stephen
Lawrence, the charity also delivers and supports projects on areas including community
cohesion, youth engagement, stop and search consultancy and scrutiny panels among others.

Black Girls Brunch UK
Black Girls Brunch UK is an events organisation committed to empowering professional black
women and helping them to feel less alone in their industry. The money raised will go towards
hosting more events, which are comprised of guest speakers, workshops, discussions, food
and a chance to network. If you want to provide long-lasting support, Black Girls Brunch is
also asking people to support their Patreon.
Check out this interview with Black Girls Brunch UK’s founder Cairo Aibangbee for more
information.

StopWatch UK
StopWatch UK is a national research and action organisation that works to promote fair,
effective and accountable policing. Formed in response to “unprecedented increases” in the
number of stop-searches, StopWatch UK also works to inform the public about the use of stop
and search and provide essential legal support.

UK Black Pride
UK Black Pride is an organisation which advocates, fights for, supports and celebrates LGBTQ
people of colour. Although 2020’s Black Pride event had to be cancelled as a result of the
coronavirus pandemic, your donations will help to fund future events (both digital and physical)
as well as supporting community outrush and hardship funds.

Black Minds Matter
Black Minds Matter is raising money to support black people struggling with their mental health
during this particularly triggering time for the community. The money will go towards linking
black families and individuals with black therapists and provide free sessions for those in need.

Alternatives Trust East London’s November 2020 Newsletter

Dear Friend

Welcome to Alternatives Trust East London’s November newsletter. Please keep reading to hear all about what we’ve been up to over the last few months as well as what we are looking forward to in the run up to Christmas. 

Thank you for your continued partnership – we couldn’t do it without you!

Make sure you read all the way to the bottom to see how you can be involved in the Big Give Christmas Challenge where we hope to raise £20,000!

Entering a second lockdown

Alternatives continues to provide emergency support to some of the most vulnerable families in Newnham as we enter into this second period of national lockdown. As you will know most of our families are homeless, many sofa surfing with children in entirely unsuitable shared houses, others in temporary accommodation provided by social services. Temporary accommodation usually consists of a B&B without any cooking facilities or one room for the whole family to sleep and live in along with a shared kitchen and bathroom with other homeless families or individuals.Lockdown in this environment is unimaginably difficult for many of us who have access to cooking facilities, more than one room and even for those of us who are fortunate enough, some outdoor space. We are partnering with other local charities and the local council to again ramp up emergency food and baby supplies to our families during this second lockdown. In the first lockdown we gave out over 700 emergency food parcels.

This lockdown is not as restrictive as the first and we have used the time between them to ensure as many of our families as possible have Covid safe face to face interaction with support staff, utilizing local parks and the garden at Forrest House.

At Alternatives we are aware of the immense emotional stress that this pandemic has brought for not only our clients but for our staff too. We decided to have a focus on self-care with our clients and provided activities in a Covid safe way that were designed to support their mental wellbeing, whilst still providing practical support where needed. The two major activities were gardening in family bubbles, providing much needed outdoor therapeutic activity for families who had been cooped up for so long.

As well as the opportunity to take part in two poetry workshops funded by the charity 4in10 who focus on child poverty in London. 

We created a video, please do take a look at the wonderful poetry we created.

We have also used this opportunity where face to fact working is restricted to spend time on staff development. All frontline support staff have undertaken training from Hestia in recognizing the signs of sexual and domestic violence, from 4in10 in speaking to the media about poverty in an empowering rather than patronizing way and three sessions from Praxis in working with Migrant Families and people with No Recourse to Public Funds.

Two of our support staff are also undertaking Level 3 family support training and three of our staff are studying for Level 1 IOSC (Office of the Immigration Service Commissioner) accreditation in order to be able to give the basic level of immigration advice without having to refer on to other organizations who are already oversubscribed and sometimes charge.

This time has been difficult but we intend to come out of it not only having delivered good support to our clients but also having built some resilience within Alternatives and our staff team to be able to support our clients even more than we could before. This moment of enforced stop and reflect has given us the space to think about how we ‘build back better’.

We continue to hold our usual WAF group over Zoom and this term we have focused on parenting, with teaching around keeping children safe, including a three-part session on keeping children safe online.

Although online safety has always been a part of our teaching, we have made a special focus of it this term as online activity has increased nationally since March. Alternatives both supports our clients and their children to access the internet but also teaches parents how to keep their children safe whilst online. It is important that the children we work with have the same access as their peers to education and the ability to socialise. But greater online engagement also increases risk.

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) recently reported on a 50% increase in online child abuse images being shared and have reported a significant increase in online grooming of children. Other forms of online exploitation have risen during lockdown, Supt Matthew Davison from Counter Terrorism Policing said ‘extremists were using the pandemic to spread hate and misinformation online, young people were being targeted in their bedrooms’. As well as reports of increased cyber bullying amongst young people.

As children from disadvantaged backgrounds are often more at risk of online harm, we are in a privileged position to be able to support parents in preventing their children encountering and being affected by these increased dangers.

Two of our clients who have received a tablet through our partnership with Skills Enterprise.

The education team have continued working with the young people throughout the last few months. We began in September by welcoming the group back to the office garden for socially distanced sessions. We then moved to Memorial Community Church when it began to get dark and cold. The new Covid safety rules were a challenge but it was so valuable to spend time in person as a group. Due to the new lockdown we have moved the sessions back online and will meet via zoom until it is safe to meet socially distanced again. We hope to introduce more fun games and discussion topics to keep us all connected and having fun. 

Meanwhile the team have been contacting schools, offering our lessons and regaining connections, showing local schools we are still available and able to help support their RSE curriculum during this time.

Excitingly, we have also begun planning a new venture with WAND in West London. We hope to help deliver our workshops on self- esteem, friendships and relationships amongst others topics during their girls group zoom sessions and are very much looking forward to continuing this relationship across London soon.

Much of our day to day work continues in a covid safe way, our weekly foodbank continues to provide essential food as well as nappies and baby milk, this month we was able to give out baby and children’s coats as well as blankets to ensure the children of the families we support are warm into the winter. 

We are drawing close to Christmas, an extremely busy time for us with are big annual fundraiser as well as providing presents to nearly 250 children and 80 mothers. Christmas is a great time for you, our partners and supporters to get involved with supporting our work! As in previous years we are doing the Big Give Christmas Challenge where any donations you make between 12pm on 1st December and 12pm on 8th December will be doubled by our lovely pledged donors and The Childhood Trust! This year there will be two main ways you can get involved. Firstly, you can get on your bike and cycle for us! Secondly, you can give and encourage others to give too.

Counselling continues to be an important element of our work, both around pregnancy choices and baby loss as well as more general counselling for parents who have experienced trauma. We are now able to provide counselling via zoom, over the phone as well as in person and on average have been providing between 40-50 hours of counselling a month.

Thank you to all those who support us, this work really cant happen without you.

Between the 1st and 8th December we are asking people to use a tracking app on their phone and go for a bike ride, take a selfie and a screenshot of your final distance and we will add all the miles ridden by all the people and aim to collectively travel the distance from Forrest House to Edinburgh Castle! (hint: if you go with a household group your time can be multiplied by however many people you cycled with)

Sign up to be a bike rider by emailing alternatives@altel.org.uk and we will send more information.