Women's Views on News |
| Unequal, trapped and controlled Posted: 23 Mar 2015 10:15 AM PDT
Domestic violence is rooted in the historical status of women in society and in the family, and is recognised internationally as both a consequence and cause of gender inequality and discrimination. And women experience significantly more frequent and severe domestic violence than men. Marilyn Howard and Amy Skipp carried out ‘exploratory research into women's experience of financial abuse and the potential implications for Universal Credit’ for Women's Aid and the TUC. Their resulting report, Unequal Trapped & Controlled, is available to read now. Official statistics do not identify financial abuse as a distinct form of abuse. Yet survivors raise this as a significant issue and Women's Aid and US research shows that it is a discrete aspect of 'coercive control' – a pattern of controlling behaviour through threats or by restricting victims' freedom. Most survivors experience financial abuse at some point (including after separating from an abusive partner). As Frances O'Grady, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress, and Polly Neate, chief executive of Women's Aid, say in the report's Foreword: Financial abuse is often misunderstood but can have a devastating impact. This coercive and controlling behaviour can leave women with no money for basic essentials such as food and clothing. It can leave them without access to their own bank accounts, with no access to any independent income and with debts that have been built up by abusive partners set against their names. Underreported and poorly recognised, financial abuse affects women across the income distribution and in a range of different ways. Even those who may have a full-time salary or who share joint accounts with their partners are not safe from financial abuse. It is also important to understand that it seldom happens in isolation: in most cases perpetrators use other abusive behaviours to threaten and reinforce the financial abuse they are conducting. It is therefore vital that action is taken to improve understanding of the nature and impact of financial abuse among staff in all frontline services that may come into contact with domestic violence survivors. There is also a particular need for organisations such as banks to pay specific attention to customers who may be experiencing abuse and to support them to access money that is rightfully theirs and find safety. Universal Credit poses a particular challenge, they point out. A benefit that is set to be paid on a household basis sits uneasily with the realities of financial abuse, where men in some households use money to abuse their partners. Under current plans they will be able to do so more easily once Universal Credit is rolled out. But there is a range of ways the system could be improved to ensure that it does not collude with or exacerbate financial abuse. These include automatically paying Universal Credit to the main carer and making the payments more frequent than monthly. These changes, alongside ensuring that women fleeing violence are fast tracked to new claims and that joint claim processes include opportunities for confidential reporting, could help ensure that women experiencing abuse can be supported. We believe, O'Grady and Neate continue, this research provides a vital contribution to knowledge about women's experience of domestic violence. It also sets out the wide ranging changes that must be urgently made to better take women's needs and safety into account. Providing an in-depth picture of women's experiences of financial abuse, this analysis demonstrates the number of ways perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse can control and coerce their partners and ex-partners. It is vital, their Foreword concludes, that both service providers and social policy commentators act on its findings. Women's Aid undertook interviews and focus groups with 27 women between October and December 2014 to explore experiences of financial abuse and its interaction with benefits and tax credits in the run-up to full Universal Credit roll-out. In December 2014 a further online survey of more women was undertaken. In the ensuing report they referred to the findings from 126 women respondents in total. Research findings and survivors' views informed the following recommendations. Addressing financial abuse requires a comprehensive coordinated plan, involving various agencies. Together this shows the need for a five-point plan which would see: 1. Survivors and agencies identifying and responding to abuse. To achieve this, Women's Aid and the TUC are calling on statutory agencies (such as social services, judiciary, and housing departments) to: Routinely carry out safe inquiry with women and appropriate signposting to specialist services; Include domestic violence and financial abuse within policy and equality statements; Include reference to the 24-hour National Domestic Violence Helpline, run in partnership with Women's Aid and Refuge [0808 2000 247] on their literature; Work with local specialist domestic violence services to identify and tackle financial abuse more effectively for any survivor, including those separated from their partner; Provide information about financial abuse such as on the Domestic Abuse and Money Education toolkit on the Women's Aid website so that women are enabled to identify this and seek appropriate support; Be trained in understanding and identifying coercive controlling behaviour including financial abuse; and Ensure mandatory training on coercive control and financial abuse for professionals coming into contact with domestic violence abusers and survivors (such as social workers, children's workers, and legal professionals). And they are calling on banks to: Work in partnership with specialist domestic violence services to develop specialist expertise in handling situations of coercive control; Have a written policy for dealing with survivors which includes having a named individual contact for survivors; Place a flag on to any accounts of identified domestic abuse survivors with all bank staff trained to know they are dealing with a survivor and what action to take; and to Treat bank accounts separately where there is domestic abuse, ensuring that joint accounts can be frozen quickly and that no further abuse of those accounts can take place. They are also calling on Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to: Review recommendations from survivors that the Universal Credit housing element is paid direct to the landlord/lender, or separate from the rest of Universal Credit; Consider ways in which direct payments could be established at the start of a claim where one partner indicates that financial abuse may be present, as well as how to develop such a process so as not to put the survivor at greater risk; Pay the elements of Universal Credit relating to children to the main carer, to signal that payment is intended to support the family; Establish procedures to facilitate disclosure at key points in the Universal Credit claim process (for example, separate interviews for each member of a joint claim couple when drawing up a claimant commitment with their work coach, and a question in the online claiming process to enable claimants to request a discussion about alternative payment arrangements and budgeting support); Allow claimant choice of frequency of Universal Credit payments; Ensure that when fleeing violence, survivors have a fast track to a new claim and receive benefits quickly, not having to wait for more than a month for a Universal Credit award to be paid; Set up a central emergency fund for survivors to get grants for one-off items to set up a new home following domestic violence; Accept Universal Credit split payment applications without investigation and notify each claimant separately including a standard, generic reason for any decision (not referring to financial abuse), with women referred to specialist domestic violence services to support their application; Review the impact of Universal Credit on financial abuse; Provide training for all its agencies (such as Jobcentre Plus, Pensions Service) in understanding, identifying and combating coercive control and particularly financial abuse and consider safe routine inquiry and appropriate signposting to specialist services; Waive restrictions on benefit rules restricting entitlement to EEA nationals and returning British nationals for claims made by survivors fleeing domestic violence; and Ensure women and children have safe child maintenance arrangements in place by fast-tracking domestic violence survivors to the Child Maintenance Collection system (without having to meet other requirements) and dropping all charges for use. They are also calling on the Ministry of Justice to: Review the legal aid regulations and to extend the evidence requirements for proving domestic violence to include information regarding financial abuse. On HMRC to: Implement safe routine enquiry about whether abuse may be taking place; especially triggered where fathers or other members of the family make a new claim for Child Benefit or request a transfer away from the mother. On The Office of National Statistics to: Identify financial and psychological abuse separately in the Crime Survey for England and Wales, and other relevant publications. And for funders and researchers to: Support the investigation, in a population study, of the prevalence and sequencing of financial abuse with a view to indicating options for early identification and intervention; and Explore the experiences of different groups of women experiencing financial abuse, such as disabled women or non-UK nationals, to ensure support is tailored to their needs.
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| Radioactive contamination an issue in fracking Posted: 23 Mar 2015 10:13 AM PDT
A Dr Rowland Dye appeared in court earlier this month accused by the North West Chamber of Commerce, ‘in collusion’ with the fracking company Cuadrilla Resources, of aggravated trespass. He was found guilty and was fined, with costs, £1326.83; although the judge did concede that Dr Dye was ‘of good character with no previous convictions and was motivated by strong moral beliefs’. The trespass in question formed part of a day of action by the environmental group Reclaim the Power who had held their summer camp in a field on the outskirts of Blackpool in solidarity with local anti-fracking campaigners. Dr Dye was arrested in December following a police investigation into a group of activists who entered and occupied the North West Chamber of Commerce offices in Blackpool, Lancashire, where Cuadrilla Resources lease the first floor space from the Chamber of Commerce Explaining why he is opposed to fracking, Rowland Dye said, "A lot of the problems with fracking are now well known; from the release of toxic chemicals to the traffic problems to the industrialisation of the landscape. "But many people are surprised to hear about the even greater risks of from radioactive contamination. "For example fracking can release radioactivity including deadly radium into the environment – when absorbed by humans radium mimics calcium and accumulates in our bones causing cancer. "It's a truly frightening problem and another reason why fracking should be banned." "When I worked in the NHS," he continued, "one of the routine tests in the X-ray department was radioactive-tracer bone imaging which produced small pictures of patients skeletons. "Any problems showed up as hot spots on the scan and these were often the clue to bone cancer. "I'm personally horrified by the thought that if the fracking companies pollute the local area with radioactive contamination then the incidents of bone cancer could start to rise in some years' time. "It's a horrible and painful death and it fills me with dread that more people could suffer from that. "That's one of the reasons that I'm committed to campaigning against fracking and I believe people need to know the very real dangers involved." Dye studied Physics at Birmingham University in the 1970s. He progressed to a Masters in Radiation Biology before obtaining a doctorate in Medical Physics, and then worked for a number of years in the NHS before moving to a teaching career in technology. Last August activists who are part of the environmental group Reclaim the Power organised a camp on the outskirts of Blackpool. This was in support of the local anti-fracking campaign group, the ‘Nanas’, who had occupied farmland at the proposed shale gas extraction site operated by Cuadrilla. As far as campaigners are concerned, Cuadrilla Resources' previous attempts at fracking in the area have resulted in two earthquakes which damaged a well at Preese Hall farm near Weeton Village in April 2011 and another well near St Annes on Sea. Two damaged wells out of a total of four so far drilled in Lancashire – a 50 per cent failure rate – has not inspired confidence that the company can carry out this process safely and efficiently. Cuadrilla has submitted planning applications to drill and frack at two more sites in the Fylde. These applications were due to be heard at a planning meeting on 28 January following several postponements, however Lancashire County Council planning officers had recommended that they be rejected, causing Cuadrilla to request a deferral to allow time for them to mitigate the council's objections, so they will now be heard some time before 30 April. Rowland Dye said, "I was among a group from the Reclaim-The-Power camp that walked into the Blackpool Chamber of Commerce last August. "We did this in a non-aggressive manner and our intention was never to commit aggravated trespass by disrupting the workers in the office."  |
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