Solace Women's Aid

The cost of living crisis is devastating for the women and families we support. Many survivors of domestic abuse experience economic or financial abuse, which leaves women and children destitute or reliant on their ex-partners when they flee abusers. Some survivors Solace work with are unemployed or working less than 15 hours and often do so for many reasons: they may be dealing with trauma as a result of years of abuse, creating security for their children who may have had to move school or nursery, looking after a child under 5 or navigating complex systems to get legal advice, open bank accounts, search for a home.   

• 92% of survivors have already reported being negatively impacted by the cost of living crisis. 

• 31% of survivors have reported increased levels of debt. 

• 23% of survivors are struggling to meet childcare costs. 

• 20% of survivors report that the crisis is being used as a tool of abuse. 

• Over half of survivors have had essential resources restricted by their abuser. 

• 1 in 4 survivors worry that the abuse could get worse in the next 6 months as a result of this crisis.

Solace, like other violence against women and girls' charities set up to support women and help them stay safe, are seeing the impact of increases in living costs on the women they support, their services and staff.

We will be running our Summer campaign over the school holidays to raise awareness and funds to help us through this crisis and ensure that we can reach the people that need our support. Look out for this next campaign to ensure that we can help provide safe and secure futures for women and children across London.

Links:

• https://www.solacewomensaid.org/