MP reveals horrors of domestic abuse in funding row
BIRMINGHAM MP Jess Phillips has spoken about trying to help a woman who suffered domestic abuse that left her unable to eat.
It was one of a number of horrific cases highlighted by the MP, who used to work with victims of sexual abuse in Sandwell in the West Midland, as she led a Commons debate about funding for women’s refuges.
She spoke out after the government announced plans to change the way refuges for vulnerable women fleeing abusive partners are funded. Money previously went to local councils in the form of grants and to residents through the housing benefit system, but cash will now all go directly to local councils.
The aim is to ensure refuges are not affected by changes to housing benefit, but Ms Phillips warned that cash-strapped councils would not be able to meet the need for refuge beds.
Ms Phillips previously worked for domestic sexual abuse charity Women’s Aid, helping run refuges in Sandwell.
She told MPs: “Refuge accommodation is not a bed space; it is a lifeline, a community, and an experienced and knowledgeable place for recovery.
“Refuge is a place where people are rebuilt, where families find each other. A bed is a place where we sleep; a refuge is far more remarkable, and we would not necessarily know it unless we had seen it.
“I remember a woman coming into the refuge where I worked. She could not speak or eat, because she had been starved as part of her control. I will never forget watching a refuge worker sit with her for hours, gently feeding her some lukewarm baked beans, teaching her how to feed herself again.”
The MP added: “I remember another family where the mother had been so belittled and so dehumanised by her abuser that she could not parent her kids anymore. She had no power or influence over them at all, and her 11-year-old daughter had become the mother to a seven-year-old and a three-yearold.
“Refuge family support workers had to rebuild that family: teach mum what parenting was and, more importantly, teach her daughter to be a kid again.”
Ms Phillips also highlighted the case of a young woman with three children who was brutally murdered after returning to a partner, after being given inadequate accommodation.
“Left lonely in a Birmingham hotel, without any of the safety measures or supports that the proper refuge, which was full, would have provided, she went back. She is dead now,” said Ms Phillips.
She said housing benefit sometimes allowed new bed spaces to be opened in response to demand, because it went to the women who needed somewhere to live.
But she told the government that giving councils a fixed sum would make this impossible.
Ms Phillips asked: “Does the Minister honestly think that if a ringfenced funding pot now went to that local council, which has to make tens of millions of pounds-worth of cuts this year, that it would not just use the money to cover the contract fees of their commissioned service?
“Councils would rightly use that money to ensure that their refuge contracts can be maintained in a time of cuts.”
Ms Phillips said Birmingham City Council had been forced to cut services to help victims of abuse.