From Women’s Aid: Today, we have published Nowhere to Turn 2024: Findings from the eighth year of the No Woman Turned Away project (NWTA Project), the latest edition of our annual report exploring findings from Women’s Aid’s NWTA Project and recommendations for key stakeholders.
Read the full Nowhere to Turn 2024 report and executive summary here
Women’s Aid will be holding a webinar exploring the findings of the Nowhere to Turn 2024 report on 1st August 2024 at 10am – 11:15am. Please register here to attend the webinar.
Key findings of the report include:
Women experienced a range of barriers to accessing refuge, imposed by structural inequalities:
These include women with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) (45.1%), mental health support needs (32.8%), and disability (28.4%). The proportion of women with NRPF increased by 8.5% compared with 2022.
Practitioners searched for refuge vacancies multiple times for many women, often with no spaces available. For 69 women, no refuge vacancies were available at least once and for 11 women, no refuge vacancies were available at least 10 times.
Women who faced multiple barriers found it particularly difficult to access refuge. Only 14 out of 193 (7.3%) women with two or more barriers, and only three out of 69 (4.3%) women with three or more barriers were accommodated in refuge.
Women stayed in a range of unsuitable places and experienced further abuse and hardship while waiting for safe accommodation:
23% of women spent time in emergency accommodation, 7.2% of women sofa-surfed and 2.9% of women slept rough.
The report details the experiences of women and children staying in emergency accommodation which lacked the specialist support needed for recovery from abuse, and sometimes lacked basic amenities.
22.2% of women experienced additional abuse from the perpetrator(s) and 6.6% of women experienced abuse from (an) additional perpetrator(s).
Statutory services often failed to meet their legal duties to support survivors:
In 2023, the NWTA Project and Women’s Aid’s Direct Services team recorded 87 separate incidents in which a statutory agency or other agency responded inappropriately to a survivor seeking help.
The NWTA practitioners support women and local services to ensure statutory services are meeting their duties to survivors.
The report makes recommendations for key stakeholders including for the NWTA project, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the Treasury, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice.
If you have any questions or would like further information about our research, please contact researchandpolicy@womensaid.org.uk
Best wishes,
The Research and Evaluation Team at Women’s Aid