Women’s Aid shares findings of the No Woman Turned Away project for the eighth year in a row

Findings from a new Women’s Aid report show that a staggering 22.2% of women supported by the charity’s No Woman Turned Away project have experienced further abuse from the perpetrator while waiting for a refuge space, with 2.9% forced into sleeping rough to escape life-threatening abuse.   

The No Woman Turned Away project, now in its eighth year, provides vital support for women and children experiencing barriers to accessing refuge provision, working alongside local services to ensure the most vulnerable survivors have access to the support they need when they need it the most. 

Based on the project’s work during 2023, the report highlights the numerous challenges faced by women most marginalised by society when it comes to accessing help to escape domestic abuse. For example, only five out of 58 women who had a disability, and only eight out of 67 women with mental health support needs were accommodated in refuge by the end of the support period. Women who faced multiple barriers to accessing support found it particularly difficult to access refuge, with only three out of 69 women with three or more barriers and neither of the two women with four barriers finding a refuge space by the end of the support period. 

The report also continues to demonstrate the impact of the Domestic Abuse Act (2021) and the work that remains to be done. While the Act brought about changes to the priority need for accommodation for those affected by homelessness due to domestic abuse and introduced a statutory duty for local authorities to fund domestic abuse support, the findings of this report suggest that the support required by survivors is still not in place. Highly concerning amongst the report’s findings are the numerous reports of statutory agencies responding inappropriately to survivors. In 2023, Women’s Aid recorded 87 such incidents, with at least 36.4% of women contacting a local housing team being prevented from making a homelessness application. Shockingly, for at least 16.3% of survivors, social services failed to meet their obligation to safeguard and protect women and children.  

Despite these numerous challenges, the No Woman Turned Away project continued delivering life-saving support, with practitioners delivering over 973 hours of support to 204 women in 2023. Practitioners helped almost half (49.5%) of women achieve a new housing outcome, with most women (64.7%) saying they felt safer after the support they received from the project.  

Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, comments:
“Three years on from the introduction of the Domestic Abuse Act, it is incredibly worrying to see that statutory services are still failing to deliver the life-saving support that women and children fleeing abuse so desperately need, and the funding for specialist services remains at unacceptable levels. It is unbearable to think that due to the barriers they face in our society, women and children are forced to continue suffering from abuse or face becoming homeless if they want to escape. And the challenges experienced by migrant women remain devastating. Given the sums involved, we believe this painful reality remains as a result of political decisions not economic ones.    

With the No Woman Turned Away project now in its eighth year, I am incredibly grateful to everyone who works so tirelessly to ensure that those in our society that are incredibly vulnerable, receive the support they so desperately need. We will continue striving to improve access to refuge spaces and specialist services, as we work towards our common goal of making domestic abuse completely unacceptable in our society.” 

Read the Nowhere to Turn Report 2024 here.