Voices from the Frontline: What women really want from domestic abuse support
28/12/2023
Over the last 6 months, CWA has worked with a group of women to explore how we can use our voices to achieve change, through our Voices from the Frontline project. One of the key themes that came up was that the response that survivors get when seeking help can be life-changing – sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worse. So we decided to map out some of our help-seeking journeys, to see along the way what worked, and what didn’t.
We did a workshop on this theme in October with a small group of women and invited a graphic facilitator to capture the conversations. The ideas on this graphic represent the experiences of just a few women - not every woman or those from every community - but the ideas here are a powerful demand to consider and build our responses to domestic abuse around what actually works, in women’s real life experiences.
Our key findings were:
There is no single help-seeking pathway or single front door. This means we need everyone to know what a good response to domestic abuse looks like.
Women highlighted the importance of three strands of support – emotional support, practical support, and access to knowledge/information
The experiences that women had where a professional's response really changed their life involved: being believed; being validated; seeing someone cares; someone recognising the perpetrator’s behaviours as abusive and wrong; support that is timely; and human connection.
If you would like to find out more or get a copy of the graphic, get in touch with sophie@cambridgewa.org.uk.
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