We Mind the Gap: Women’s Aid publish The Price of Safety report exposing that it can cost £50,000 to flee domestic abuse
New report ‘The Price of Safety: The cost of leaving an abuser and rebuilding a safe, independent life’, published by Women’s Aid today, shows that it costs around £50,000 to leave an abuser.
While the impact of this figure can be mitigated by state support, in the best-case scenario a survivor who is receiving her full support entitlement would still face a deficit of over £10,000. This £10,000 gap is doubled for survivors who do not have recourse to public funds because of their immigration status.
Fleeing incurs costs, which many survivors are unable to meet after suffering years of economic abuse. The immediate price of leaving and the costs associated with rebuilding a new life create a significant barrier to fleeing and staying fled.
The biggest single cost for survivors is often legal fees for the family courts, as survivors strive to keep their children safe and protected from abusers. The second is housing. In our case study, benefits only met two thirds of the cost for this.
The safety net of state support (including social security, legal aid and free childcare) is vital, but it is not designed with survivors of domestic abuse in mind. The eligibility and evidence criteria can rule out large groups of survivors, especially those with insecure immigration status, and stop them from accessing the essential life-saving and life-changing support they need.
The Government has committed to halving violence against women and girls in the next 10 years, and as domestic abuse is the most common form of this type of gender-based abuse, enabling all survivors to safely flee must play a key role in this.
For this to happen, we must see key policy changes, including the expansion of the Road/Rail to Refuge Scheme which offers free travel to those fleeing domestic abuse, reform to the Child Maintenance Service, and guaranteed funding for the Flexible Fund which provides one-off payments to survivors of domestic abuse fleeing for 2025/26 and beyond.
A different approach to addressing the impacts of domestic abuse that survivors face, which looks at the system through the lens of survivors’ needs to ensure that economic support is accessible, sufficient and domestic abuse informed, is essential to addressing the barriers survivors faces when fleeing and to the success of this Government’s mission.
Change needs to come alongside an investment commitment in the upcoming Spending Review of at least £516 million a year to specialist domestic abuse services. These services provide survivors with information on benefit entitlements, housing rights and local grants, as well as trauma-informed mental health support and recovery programmes which help as they rebuild their lives. Without this support to maximise their income, survivors will likely face a greater deficit – and the costs to the state will also be higher.
It is important to remember that the costs explored in this new report are only the financial ones. The Hidden Housing Crisis report, published by Women’s Aid in 2020, showed that survivors also ‘pay the price’ through the upheaval and disruption they experience, challenging housing condition and homelessness, and ongoing abuse post-separation.
It is not an easy choice for survivors to leave and with such significant barriers, many will feel that this is not a choice they can even make, as they cannot afford to bridge the deficit they will face when they do. Survivors need the Government to commit to removing the obstacles they are facing, so they can live free from abuse.
Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said:
“The staggering cost of fleeing identified in this report highlights the urgent need for long-term funding commitments from the Government, primarily towards life-saving specialist domestic abuse services. Schemes, such as the Flexible Fund, also provide an important safety net for survivors as they leave their abusers.
Fleeing takes an incredible amount of courage, so when survivors do make the decision to leave, it’s crucial they have the specialist support in place, as well as the financial means to do so. No survivor should have to stay with an abuser, living in harm and fear, because they cannot afford to flee and rebuild their life. The reality is that without funding commitments, women will pay the price with their lives.”
Notes:
- You can read the full report here.
- The report is based on an illustrative case study of a survivor. Decisions about this survivor’s demographics and circumstances were decided based on data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and On Track, Women’s Aid case management system and a comprehensive dataset on survivors who interact with domestic abuse services
- The cost estimate is over the period of a year.
- Costs would be greater for survivors in areas like London, due to the housing prices, and for those who need a car or taxi to get around, for example due to disabilities or living in a rural area. Legal fees can also cause costs to soar, particularly in complicated family court cases which can reach hundreds of thousands of pounds.
- Support would be lower for survivors with no recourse to public funds, who would not be eligible for most benefits, and for those with pre-settled status on the EU Settlement Scheme, who have to navigate a complex and confusing system to demonstrate their eligibility.
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