This guest blog from Border Women’s Aid (BWA) gives an insight into how its outreach service supports women and children experiencing domestic abuse.
In addition to providing refuge, our Outreach Service was established in 2020 to extend our capacity to respond to each woman according to her needs. This service ensures that we can be with women at all stages of their journey, not just for the relatively short time they may spend in refuge, from doing preventative work before a situation becomes a crisis to enabling women to reflect back on their experience and its long-term impact on their lives.
We offer one-to-one support in a way that suits the individual. This can be in-person at our office, at home if that’s safe or arrangements can be made to meet in the community. We also offer support over the telephone, email and videocalls.
We use various tools to increase an understanding of domestic abuse and trauma, including our Own My Life group programme, books, and visual aids. We help women access benefits, healthcare, housing and other services, and provide much-needed emotional and psychological support.
Above all, we listen – so that women know that their experience is validated. We strive to enable women to take control of their situations, and live the lives they want for themselves and their children.
In 2020-21 we had 27 referrals for outreach support. The number of referrals has grown year on year. In 2024-25, we had 243 outreach referrals, and we are expecting to exceed this number in 2025-26. Around 50% of outreach referrals come from women themselves.
Women have told us that their BWA support worker was the first person who really listened and in whom they could confide. Typical quotes: ‘You provide a safe space to discuss difficult thing’; ‘I’m feeling empowered and less alone’. One woman strikingly declared she now realised that her whole life had been a cycle of abuse.
We created the video we are sharing with you today using words from a Thank You letter from a woman who was supported via our Outreach Service. It is a poignant illustration of what the service does and how valuable the service is to women.
