Homelessness
Our homelessness services provide outreach, advice and support to those experiencing homelessness as a result of domestic abuse.
Our teams help people in a holistic way and hold housing and financial abuse clinics as well as providing wellbeing activities and a chance to meet other like-minded people.
REACH
Manchester Women’s Aid Reach service provides outreach, advice and support to individuals and families who have homeless statutory duty with Manchester City Council due to domestic abuse. Reach support includes risk assessment, safety planning, initial assessment and a full holistic, person-centred support package to meet people’s practical, emotional and safety needs.
The support offered aims to increase safety, build confidence and self-esteem and develop awareness of domestic abuse in a supportive and way. We also provide guidance and signposting to careers, education, employment and training.
Staff support service users on a one-to-one basis and can meet people in person or provide telephone or video call support.
Reach also provides a weekly drop-in for service users with a housing and finance clinic, refreshments and a scheduled wellbeing activity. We also partner with other local agencies to provide workshops and opportunities that empower our service users to develop useful skills and experiences, such as working with Care and Repair to deliver DIY skills workshops.
Respite Rooms
Our Respite Rooms service provides support to women who live in Manchester “A Bed Every Night” (ABEN) accommodation.
ABEN residents can attend our weekly drop-ins with a hot meal and creative, varied and practical activities to increase their emotional well-being and reduce their social isolation.
We also engage the residents in specialist one-to-one domestic abuse work and programmes involving risk assessments, safety planning and a holistic support plan including practical support needs and training and employment opportunities.
Respite Rooms support is provided in partnership with the ABEN accommodation providers along with Manchester Action on Street Health (MASH) who support the women with a specialist in-reach worker.
Experts by Experience
Our Reach Voices Group has the aim of empowering our service users to be involved in the influence, design, delivery and co-production of our services. They attend focus groups and workshops, Project Steering Groups and our Voice Groups. Feedback from the Voices Forum is reported directly to the board of trustees to allow effective change to take place. We also take feedback from our lived experience experts around their homelessness experience which is taken to the Women’s Homelessness Involvement Group (WHIG) to feed into the Manchester Homelessness Partnership to inform local policy.
Homelessness in women
Women’s homelessness is often linked to their experiences of domestic abuse. It has been difficult to gather true representative data on women’s homelessness because women’s experience differs greatly from men’s, and it is often hidden from statistics due to the way these are collected.
Street counts are carried out to collect data on those who are street homeless. These statistics are based on those who meet the government’s definition of “rough sleeping”, people who are “bedding down for the night” in the open air or in buildings not designed for habitation.
Recent surveys carried out have shown that women’s homelessness is experienced differently to this and therefore the street counts may not be capturing a true representation of the number of women who are actually homeless.
The data suggests that women who do not have anywhere to live are unlikely to camp down for the night and they often avoid city centres. They may decide to walk around all night rather than settling somewhere which leaves them feeling exposed and vulnerable. The surveys show how women have stayed in places such as hospital toilets, emergency waiting rooms, train or bus stations and tried to take shelter for as long as possible in late opening fast-food places, or travel on public transport.
Women’s homelessness may be more intermittent as women may be able to find a family member or friend to stay with. Women who are homeless could be vulnerable to staying with risky people or engaging in sex work to enable them to be off the streets and have a roof for the night.
Many women who are experiencing homelessness have also experienced domestic abuse which is why Manchester Women’s Aid continues to work in close partnership with homeless services and organisations to ensure that specialist support is received by those who need it.
