At the outbreak of Covid, increases in domestic violence were recognised nationally and internationally as a grave threat to women and children. In Ireland that impact was felt immediately as shown by two reports produced by Safe Ireland, the national development and co-ordination body with responsibility for domestic violence.
The Tracking the Shadow Pandemic reports, covered the lockdown periods between March and December 2020, and found that approximately 2,000 women and 500 children were supported by a domestic violence service every month.
In total, 57,277 helpline calls were responded to, an average of 187 calls every day over the 10 months, compared to an average of 147 calls daily in 2018, the year when data was last collected. In addition, 5,895 women contacted a domestic violence service for the first time.
“The Covid-19 pandemic exposed much about the extent and nature of domestic violence,” says Safe Ireland chief executive Mary McDermott. “We know and understand a lot more about coercive control and what we need to do to respond to it and to prevent it. This awareness, importantly, raised through the Department of Justice campaigns, also triggered an immense public response of empathy and support at individual, community and corporate levels. We know that people recognise the problem and want to act.”
This fund will help women and children escaping domestic abuse
One action in particular was the establishment of the Safe Ireland Survivor Fund which was launched with the support of Airbnb in September. The Survivor Fund makes crucial grant-aid directly available to women and children who are escaping control and abuse through local frontline domestic violence services around the country. The fund also supports domestic violence services, who can use it towards equipment, including play pods for children, training, and specialist supports for high-risk and vulnerable women, for example.
The Safe Ireland Survivor Fund is backed by substantial funding from Airbnb. Other donors to the fund include the Late Late Show Toy Show Appeal for children and The Ireland Funds.
“We greatly appreciate Airbnb’s support and engagement,” says Lisa Marmion, Safe Ireland services development manager. “Together with other donations, this fund will help women and children escaping domestic abuse with basic needs such as groceries, utility bills, securing a deposit for safe accommodation and phone credit. “Financial control is a core mechanism of coercive control in an abusive relationship.
Barriers like access to phone credit, transport or the inability to pay bills, can and do keep women trapped.”
She describes the Survivor Fund as a source of flexible funding for women and children escaping abusive situations. It makes funding available in a timely fashion to people who may be in crisis situations.
In many instances the issue can be time, people simply can’t wait for formal funding approval processes to run their course. In other cases, the system may actually work against them with means testing frequently proving a barrier to married women whose husbands may be relatively well off. That issue has thankfully been dealt with in respect of the Housing Assistance Payment but other instances still occur.
“The complex nature of the social welfare system as it applies to people who may appear to be well off can present difficulties,” Marmion notes. “Making the Housing Assistant Payment available to people escaping from abusive environments has been a massive help.”
She says there is strong evidence internationally that targeted flexible funding can prevent poor outcomes in the long term and that Safe Ireland had experience of it with its Survivor Resilience Fund (SRF) which ran in 2017 and 2018 with funding from the Community Foundation for Ireland.
“That led to better outcomes for survivors,” she adds. “When it came to the Covid pandemic we received a lot of donations and we used that to work with a lot of women and children. When we got the money from Airbnb, we had a tried and trusted model to work with.”
Access to the Survivors Fund can make a huge difference to the women we work with
While she describes the funding as flexible, it is tightly controlled. “The Survivor Fund has very strict conditions. It has to be a fund of last resort and be used when funding is not available anywhere else. It can’t duplicate anything that is already there. Funding also has to be of demonstrable value in helping women and children.”
Carmel McNamee is manager of the Domestic Violence Advocacy Service (DVAS) for Sligo, Leitrim and West Cavan. “Access to the Survivors Fund can make a huge difference to the women we work with. We can work with women to identify the practical supports they need to make a difference in their day to day life for her and her children. We have provided a broad range of supports. It can be very basic things like grocery vouchers. It can be paying car tax or insurance for a year. We have situations where people are struggling to pay these things three months at a time and worrying about them constantly. This brings a great sense of relief.”
The fund has also been used to pay for the installation of video security systems. “Sometimes, partners continue to intimidate and threaten women and children,” McNamee explains. “Women have been able to share video from these systems with Garda evidence for criminal prosecutions. We are so grateful to have the funding to be able to install systems capable of providing video of sufficient quality for the Garda to use.”
Marmion concludes by expressing the hope that the Survivor Fund or some form of flexible funding will become a permanent feature of the domestic violence survivor support landscape. “It can completely change someone’s experience. I hope that the overall support for survivors will in future include flexible funding.”