Women's Views on News |
| New safe housing project starts up Posted: 10 Sep 2015 05:47 AM PDT
Access to safe accommodation forms a crucial part of the decision process for women managing gender-based violence. And gender-based violence is a key cause of homelessness. Around 13 per cent of all homeless acceptances are related to domestic violence, and research indicates that in up to 40 per cent of cases, domestic violence is the main cause or a contributing factor towards women becoming homeless. While safe accommodation is a priority for all women, some women are faced with multiple and intersecting disadvantages that act as – further – barriers to them getting help. The links between gender-based violence, mental ill-health and substance use are well documented: for many the only way to deal with the trauma associated with violence is by substance use. Yet for women faced with these experiences, safe housing is often difficult to find. Indeed, recent research undertaken by Against Violence & Abuse (AVA), a 'second tier' charity whose clients are other service providers, found that refuges take women who disclose substance use or diagnosed mental ill-health on what AVA calls a ‘patchy basis‘. In the context of specialist refuges AVA found that 2 out of the 3 surveyed were unable to take women with substance use or a mental health diagnosis. For Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic and refugee women access to safety has been is further compounded: specialist services have been disproportionately hit by the cuts, and women are often being forced to access generic services that do not meet their needs. And for those women who are unable to access refuges, homeless accommodation is often not fit for purpose. AVA is not the only group raising concenrs. A recent report by St Mungo’s Broadway, a homelessness charity and housing association, found that the majority of their homeless female clients had experienced gender-based violence and had been unable to find housing services that would meet their needs. It was with these gaps in provision in mind, that AVA’s Stella Project was commissioned by Trust for London, a charitable organisation set up to reduce poverty and inequality in London, to work with 6 refuges and 2 housing providers to improve the provision of safe accommodation for women with experiences of gender-based violence, problematic substance use and mental ill-health. This London Stella Project held its first steering group recently, bringing together professionals from across the women's sector, substance use, multiple needs and the housing sector. As a leading UK agency addressing the overlapping issues of domestic and sexual violence, drug and alcohol use and mental health, the Stella Project works for positive, sustained improvement in the way services are delivered to survivors, their children and perpetrators. Building on the Stella Project’s evidence of ‘what works’ from previous initiatives the project will: Work with commissioners and service managers to improve specs and contract monitoring around refuges to enable clear and transparent monitoring of the number of women with substance use/mental health support needs and the numbers refused bed spaces; Improve risk assessment practices within refuges and housing providers through training and support for staff; Improve referral pathways to treatment providers; Ensure that Black and minority ethnic women with substance use or mental ill-health, who are experiencing abuse, can access specialist refuge provision; Explore options for funding specialist workers; and Involve service users to inform and influence service delivery and the wider project. AVA is working to end all forms of violence against women and girls. For more information about their work, or to offer support, click here.  |
| Better palliative care needed not euthanasia Posted: 10 Sep 2015 05:37 AM PDT
By Liz Carr. "If you're demented, you're wasting people's lives – your family's lives – and you're wasting the resources of the NHS." This was the view expressed by Baroness Warnock a few years ago on the subject of euthanasia. Her comments exposed clearly that while the case for legalising assisted suicide is made on the grounds of the relief of unbearable suffering, it will open the door to a new duty to die – getting rid of the inconvenient – the old, the incontinent, the expensive. It is a possibility that Rob Marris MP, whose private member's Assisted Dying Bill would introduce doctor-assisted suicide, appears to have no problem with. At the Westminster launch of his Bill at the end of July, Marris set out his views about people killing themselves because they feel they are a burden to others. He said: "If someone thinks 'I do not wish to be a burden', then if they have mental capacity, they can make an independent decision themselves. I do not think the law should deny them that choice." I did a study tour a few years ago to countries that had legalised assisted suicide or euthanasia. In the US, I talked to people from the campaign group Compassion and Choices. Their strategy was very clear – push for 10-15 years with stories of people with the sort of devastating impairments that independent-minded opinion leaders most fear. Eventually, public opinion will change – and the law will follow. I was in Luxembourg just after they changed the law there. The MPs who were pushing for it wanted it for children and people with dementia as well. But they knew they wouldn't get it so they went for the softer target of the terminally ill. I cannot tell you how painful this is for me and for many other disabled activists who have struggled to establish a decent and independent life for all disabled people – including and perhaps most importantly for those with life-limiting conditions. We have moved from the segregated warehousing of disabled people in institutions to community support from local authorities for personal care needs; to the Independent Living Fund (ILF) and direct payments to enable us to employ personal assistants. To the chance to live not just exist. Over time, disabled people have gained some sense of being considered fully human, valued, able to contribute – as partners, parents and children. To work. To be active in public life. The reality is that we are only part-way through a journey to full civil and human rights and that such rights that we have are vulnerable to political change and economic expediency. The ILF was recently abolished; local authorities have had to slash adult social care budgets. Once, there was acknowledgement that, even if you could work, your options with an impairment were very limited. Now we have a sanctions regime and the disappearance of "social security" for everyone when they need it – replaced by "welfare". The rates of poverty among disabled people are soaring, as is disability hate crime. In the disability movement, we have always known that it is the social context in which we experience our impairments and health conditions that matters most. Laws, policies, behaviour, attitudes, opportunities, support – these are the things that determine our quality of life to a greater or lesser extent. Even at the margins, for those with just months to live, whether you have access to good end of life support makes a huge difference – as surveys of bereaved relatives regularly show. The law should keep us all safe without discrimination. At the moment, it would be illegal to encourage or assist me to commit suicide, whatever the circumstances – even if I desperately wanted someone to help me kill myself. Changing that would alter our culture forever. If physical pain now, why not mental distress later? If terminal illness now, why not someone who will suffer for longer than six months? And no one has yet explained to me how an assisted suicide law could operate without mistakes or abuse by relatives that share Baroness Warnock's views. The very fact of Parliament putting the decision and the practice of assisting suicide in a clinical setting would encourage people to consider it. Not Dead Yet UK and other disabled people campaigning against the licensing of doctor-assisted suicide certainly understand what it is like to suffer physical and psychological pain – and to have limited options. We know the impact, not just on ourselves but on those who love us. We hear constantly about the high price paid by family carers. The defining media narrative about disability is about suffering – ours and other people's. But how meaningful is the choice to die when being alive means being constantly confronted with how inconvenient and expensive you are – in money and time – to those that love you; to the taxpayer. Is a new duty to die really something that Parliament wants to sanction by licensing unwilling doctors to decide who can die and supplying them with lethal drugs? Instead, shouldn't we all be campaigning for that communal safety net of "social security" for anyone who needs it, and for good end of life care, including palliative medicine, for those at the end of their lives? Liz Carr is an actress – seen in the BBC's 'Silent Witness' for example – and an activist for Not Dead Yet. A version of this article appeared on the Labour List website on 9 September 2015.  |
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