Lockdown brought surge in demand for domestic abuse victim support

The demand on services supporting victims of domestic abuse has seen an increase.

The Fife Violence Against Women Partnership (FVAWP) say a sharp drop in referral numbers at the start of the pandemic was quickly replaced with a “higher-than-normal” rate for many organisations as the impact of isolation for many people became clearer.

Services reported substantial waiting lists in the autumn, according to the FVAWP’s annual report for 2020/21, with Fife Women’s Aid experiencing a 77% increase in their waiting list across all of its services and an acute 112% increase for its children and young people’s service.

The same trend was also true for the Fife Rape and Sexual Abuse Centre (up 48%), the Kingdom Abuse Survivors Project (up 19%) and Safe Space (up 14%), while some waiting lists also had to be closed for periods.

The issue came to light in an update to Fife’s community and housing services sub committee, who heard that lockdown had a huge impact on victims – whether through increased opportunity for perpetrators to be abusive, exert coercive control, a lack of usual protective measures or lack of usual coping mechanisms.

Heather Bett, partnership chair and NHS Fife clinical services manager, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has, and will continue, to place women, children and young people experiencing domestic abuse, sexual violence and other forms of violence against women at increased risk of harm for the foreseeable future.

“This has been a year like no other as partners worked together to make sure services continued to support those who needed help. We all had to learn new ways of working.

“In the first few months of lockdown, agencies worked hard to adapt to ever changing circumstances – developing ways to keep staff and service users safe from not only abuse but also COVID.

“Risk assessments, home working and virtual meetings became the norm.

“But the feedback from service users also reflected the efforts made and flexibility to respond to individual need and provide a wide range of holistic services and crisis support.

“COVID placed significant pressures on individuals and organisations, and no-one suspected at the start of the pandemic that we would still be working with restrictions more than a year later.

“So I would like to thank everyone for their commitment, recognising the many difficulties. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

The topic of violence against women was also particularly prevalent in Fife this week with the ongoing fallout from Raith Rovers’ signing of David Goodwillie.

Councillor John Beare noted that Depute Provost Julie Ford had written to Fife Council chief executive Steve Grimmond urging the local authority to review its relationships with the Kirkcaldy club in light of the transfer and urged colleagues to back that call.

“I don’t want specific high profile local issues to overshadow this item on the agenda, but given the paper that’s before us we can’t let current events go without comment,” he said.

“If eliminating violence against women and girls is specifically the subject of the paper before us, we cannot stand idly by and ignore the appalling decision made in the boardroom of one of Fife’s most high-profile organisations and the reputational damage that does to us all in Fife.”