Solace Women's Aid

Solace, a leading specialist charity in the UK supporting women and children experiencing domestic abuse and sexual violence have launched their heart wrenching Christmas appeal reminding people that it takes a woman on average seven years to leave an abusive relationship. 

The short animation follows the life of ‘Maya’ over seven years of Christmas, based on the Twelve Years of Christmas theme, with the song being brought brilliantly to life by award winning Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka Self Esteem, one of the UK’’s most exceptional and in demand singer songwriters – herself a vocal campaigner against sexual violence and for the right for women and girls to live safe lives. 

The charity support nearly 30,000 women each year in London alone,and say that not only have calls become more complex since the pandemic, but now both service users and workers are concerned by the escalating cost of living. This Christmas Solace will be supporting more than 300 women and families in their refuges as well as continuing to run their many varied services, from advice to rape crisis to therapeutic services aimed at helping women and their families recover from the trauma of abuse. 

Jon Leney, Executive Creative Director of MSQ Sustain, says; 

‘When we learnt that it takes an average of 7 years for women to leave an abusive relationship, we knew this would make a compelling jumping off point for a powerful and emotive film. And by changing the words to a familiar Christmas song, sung by one of the UK’s leading female artists, combined with animation to tell Maya’s story, we’ve been able to bring this horrific fact to people’s attention, this Christmas.’   

Links:

• https://www.solacewomensaid.org/get-involved/7-years-christmas

In recent years we have been assisting to the rise of an increasing number of feminist movements, which, with different approaches and from different angles, are doing an outstanding work shedding light on the gender-based power imbalances that affect our society. From the gender wage-gap to the most recent pro-choice movements that followed the Roe vs. Wade sentence, an increasing number of women are becoming aware of the many forms of inequality we are subject to in every daily choice we make.

If, on one hand, the turmoil around gender empowerment is holistically addressing every aspect of sociality, on the other, there is also increasing awareness around Violence Against Women and Girls. More and more women are learning that they are not alone against MVAWG and that abuse does not only happen when there’s physical violence. Many more have started to proactively question their relationships and call MVAWG organisations to ask for help.

Just like for the feminist movements and the awareness around MVAWG, 2021-2022 has been a year of changes also for Solace Women’s Aid. As the Leading Pan-London women’s organization, with the broadest service offer to support victims/survivors, we felt the need to grow to increasingly meet the needs of every woman and child that needs our help. This year we achieved a lot, and our efforts concentrated primarily in:

-        Increasing the number of statutory bodies with which we collaborate to ensure that the upcoming MVAWG strategies of the boroughs across London are informed by the voices of survivors, staff, and volunteers of the sector to be able to efficiently address actual needs.

-        Expanding our collaborations with the NHS to inform General Practices, through consolidated and experimented models of actions, building capacity within practices to identify and address early signs of abuse, in order to provide immediate help to victims.

-        Innovating our Children and Young People offer, to create projects that adapt to the needs and capabilities of each child, to ensure that every young person is given the opportunity to explore their sense of self and understand, with age-appropriate activities, how to lead the change, challenging toxic gender stereotypes.

The needs that we saw emerging during the pandemic and the results of the monitoring and evaluation activities of past projects, have informed our "Five Years Strategy 2022-2027" that captures the following principles as the ones that will guide our future actions:

-        “Intersectional Feminism” - to be a truly feminist organisation, we have to understand that there are many different, intersecting, forms of inequality that create compounding experiences of discrimination and trauma.

-        “Partnership and Collaboration” - we will work collaboratively with partners to greater effect change in the lives of survivors of all forms of MVAWG, developing a robust coordinated community response that can be truly intersectional.

-        “Service User and Evidence Based-Led” - we are committed to listening and engaging with our service users to be guided on how to improve our services, collecting their feedback and evidence from our services to better influence policymakers on matters relating to VAWG.

To achieve our mission to end the harm done through gender-based violence we have identified 6 strategic objectives:

1. Strategic Influencing, Partnerships and Leadership, working alone and in partnership to influence issues within the sector, amplifying the voices of our Service Users, staff, and volunteers.
2. Organisational Development and Growth, doing more to support our growing staff and ensure that we foster an inclusive work environment for both employees and Service Users.
3. Long-Term Recovery and Lasting Change, using a holistic approach leading to lasting change focusing on a more nuanced and needs-led model revolving around survivors’ whole needs.
4. Accountability, Education and Employment, implementing specialist projects working with employment, as economic independence is key to escaping abusive households.
5. Children and Young People, expanding our offer to address the needs of children who have been minimized for too long and not treated as victims in their own right.
6. Empowerment, Engagement and Aspirations, fostering an environment of women supporting women, we aim to create opportunities for professional development and upskilling for Service Users and staff members.

AISHA’S STORY

Aisha was only 20 when, with her husband and her newborn daughter, she decided to move to London from Morocco. When the family arrived to the UK, they had nobody here and could only count on one another. That’s when the abuse, which started right after the marriage, escalated.

Now that she was far away from her family and loved ones, her partner started making her feel dependent on him. He started controlling every move she did, contacting her repeatedly on social media or calling her with the phone number hidden, always wanting to be informed of her whereabouts. Aisha started feeling more and more scared.

The night she started developing the idea of fleeing her house, her husband had tried to force himself on her and then called the police presenting himself as the victim. After that night she did not leave her house for three weeks, before deciding to self-refer to Solace Women’s aid. She left her house, her job, and her old life and, together with her daughter, she moved into one of our refuges.

She started working with a caseworker to address her trauma and regain self-esteem. Our staff supported her with Universal Credit and a Housing Benefit application, for Aisha to regain financial autonomy. Most importantly the case worker supported her in reshaping her relationship with her daughters. After years of assisted violence, in fact, the child was perpetuating the father’s behaviour and she was struggling to trust her mother and to form with her a healthy relationship.

Aisha never looked back at her choice to leave and now she’s slowly building on what she’s learnt about herself during her time with Solace. She and her daughter are safe and we’ll soon be ready to move out of the refuge.

Our growth and the possibility for the almost 30.000 women we helped last year to empower from abuse, was only possible thanking to your support. Believing in our mission, sharing our values, and supporting our action you are invaluable to Solace’s growth and we would like to thank you on behalf of our staff, our volunteers, and, most importantly, our Service Users.

Thank you for your continuous support,

Beth Rollings

Campaigns and Community Manager

Links:

• Solace Women's Aid 5 Years Strategy