‘We’ve never wanted to turn anyone away’ ‘

All areas: Lockdown sees big rise in referrals to domestic abuse charities

Domestic abuse charities have seen a huge spike in referrals during lockdown and fear figures will continue to rise as the pandemic continues,

The Dash Charity, which is based at Slough Trading Estate and also serves people within the Royal Borough, said it had a 66 per cent increase in referrals from April to June.

It had 70 referrals in April, 116 in May and 87 in June.

Alison Bourne, Dash chief executive officer, said the charity has had to adapt to the challenges of lockdown, which include working remotely and insufficient funding to cover increased referrals.

She said: “Funding is

always a challenge. Just when we need it, we haven’t seen it come through.

“We haven’t got fantastic technology, we are a small charity, and a lot of the big funding has gone to national charities, who do great work but not frontline work like small local ones.”

The charity launched an urgent fundraising campaign to raise £150,000 for essential work. It also thanked the community for donations from its Amazon Wishlist.

Alison said a lot of staff laptops did not have cameras, which made it difficult at the beginning to hold face-to-face contact with those in need.

The uncertainty over Dash’s future funding means the charity cannot keep staff on long contracts. Claire Batchelor, advocacy and outreach services manager, said this limits the charity taking a preventative approach.

Dash runs a healthy relationships workshop in schools and works with Thames Valley Police to reduce repeated incidents but the programmes cost money.

Claire said: “We’ve never wanted to turn anyone away as we know how hard it is to call, it’s such a big thing to be sharing what they’ve been experiencing.”

The charity has urged people to get in touch if they know someone who is experiencing abuse.

Claire added: “There is a stigma that people feel embarrassed to have caused it.

“The only people that cause it is the perpetrator. It is their choice to be violent and coercive. If you see it, call it out as it could save people’s lives.”

Hestia, a domestic abuse charity which serves London and Slough, said it also saw referrals rise – by 31 per cent in Slough during lockdown.

Andrea Lawrence, service manager for Slough, said: “Coming out of lockdown, there has been a huge increase, we’ve had more self referrals. Unfortunately a lot of people we support are living with the perpetrator and they can’t always contact us by telephone.”

The Government was contacted for comment about funding concerns raised by Dash. It had not responded at the time of going to press.