Safe as Houses

Since Refuge announced it might have to close due to excessive funding cuts from the government, we have to question whether the withdrawal of support to such an institution is lawful and whether the local authority has a duty to provide shelter to those at risk of harm.

The Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004 was the first revision of DV legislation in over 30 years and put in place new powers to support victims at risk of or fleeing domestic abuse, through the courts and police e.g making common assault an arrestable offence and breaching of non-molestation orders, a criminal offence. It implemented a framework from which all agencies could follow a code of practice to ensure all victims were given adequate support and protection.

This was an enhancement to existing legislation – Housing Act 1998 and Homelessness Act 2002 – which aimed to prevent further incidents of abuse by providing an interim duty to accommodate;  an admission that where there may be reason to believe (a verbal declaration should suffice) a person is believed to be at risk of homelessness due to domestic abuse and it is not reasonable to occupy their current premises, the local authority has a duty of care to establish whether they are in priority need (under section 184 Housing Act) and eligible for assistance.

In my experience as a DV worker, priority need differed from one city/borough to the next. Single women without children were not considered in this category and as such, their only recourse to safe accommodation came in the form of a refuge. Even in cases where a service user had come to the end of their license agreement, whereupon they would become unintentionally homeless, local authorities would refuse to accept they had duty of care, suggesting that we move the survivor on to another refuge. So much for Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998 – The right to privacy, family life, home and correspondence.

The role of a refuge is to provide temporary accommodation, a halfway house before suitable, permanent accommodation is allocated. As a rule, all the women passing through safe houses should submit homelessness applications on arrival, because they are in fact, unintentionally homeless. If, for whatever reason, the service user could not remain at the refuge, she was then considered to be intentionally homeless and as a result, not eligible for assistance. Survivors were being manipulated into staying at refuges.

I had a case once where the survivor was at an immediate risk of homicide. Police reports had been taken, her injuries photographed. She had been viciously attacked and her small children witnessed it taking place. Social services were involved. We were in the process of securing an injunction. A clear-cut case if ever there was one. Yet the local authority disallowed her application because the worker believed she was lying about her disclosure.  They simply did not believe her. She had presented with a hospital report but this was not enough. However, she was sent away with a list of refuges whom she would  have to call herself along with the advice that she may be in a refuge for up to 3 years, after which she would no longer be deemed priority need Band A and would be demoted to that of non-priority Band C. The housing worker suggested to my client that if she were to approach a refuge, the local authority might be more inclined to believe she was telling the truth. Despite the reams of paperwork and evidence suggesting she and her children were at an increased risk of homicide. Eventually, a multi-agency approach imcluding me and her social worker was successful in demonstrating the local authority did have a duty of care to “safeguard and promote the welfare of children in need” (Children Act 1989) which includes providing accommodation.

Essentially there are 3 options when fleeing:

• Homelessness application

• Transferring tenancy from current premises to another borough

• Refuge

Local housing lists are stretched beyond their limits, many more people presenting at Homeless Needs Units than there are properties available. In order to transfer tenancy, another must become available. As a result, many women are forced to stay in hostile situations. Or approach a refuge.

The Homelessness Code of Guidance for Local Authorities states (paragraph 16.27):

“Housing authorities should develop close links with women’s refuges within their district… However, housing authorities should recognise that placing an applicant in a refuge will generally be a temporary expedient only, and a prolonged stay could block a bed that was urgently needed by someone else at risk. Refuges should be used to provide accommodation for the minimum period necessary before alternative suitable accommodation is secured elsewhere.  Housing authorities should not delay in securing alterative accommodation in the hope that the applicant might return to her partner.”

If Refuge are forced to close their doors, where will the non-priority, supposedly intentionally homeless survivors of domestic abuse go? Local authorities will no longer be able to place duty of care at their door. A system that has already collapsed under the strain cannot conceivably provide additional support. How will local authorities cope with a drastic increase in homelessness applications? Will they have temporary accommodation in place for women who urgently need to flee? Where will they find the stock to re-house these urgent cases?

There are no answers to these questions because we cannot magic provision out of thin air.

Anthem (Leonard Cohen)

I can’t run no more
with that lawless crowd
while the killers in high places
say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
a thundercloud
and they’re going to hear from me.

Petitioners.. Lend me your ears

Avaaz, 38 degrees, Care2… We British love a good petition. We can save the forests, halt Rupert Murdoch in his dark and dirty tracks. If enough of us get involved, heck, we could even save the NHS! Couldn’t we? Dr Kailash Chand’s petition to ‘drop the health bill’ currently stands at 151,565, surpassing the 100k mark backbenchers need in order to discuss the will of the people. By a long shot. The people have spoken, it would seem. The NHS is saved! Isn’t it?

Mark Donne wrote an enlightening piece for the Independent in which he explains that our collective voice has been given a platform that is not all we perceive it be. ‘Clicktivism’, signing a petition, hashtagging,  is holding us back and merely “provide an extremely convenient holding centre for disgruntled or livid voters. Most are unable or just too busy/ exhausted/lazy to attend a demonstration or occupation, but click here, “like” this and you have resisted: you (and the forces you oppose) can sleep at night.”

A ruse to divert us away from actually acting.  As a nation, we’ve been forced to subscribe to this method of activism because we have seen what happens when we do vote with our feet. Armed police on horses charge into crowds full of children, politicians strike up dialogue calling for water-boarding and rubber bullets and people get beaten and detained, their identities embedded into systems that will hold them for however long the establishment deem fit. We live in a tyrannical state.

When the Prime Minister of this country holds a summit to discuss NHS ‘reform’ and how these changes affect GPs yet refuses to invite said GPs, he is making a statement that the matter is not open for discussion. Why haven’t the BMA and Royal College of General Practitioners been asked to attend? Could it be because they oppose the bill and fear that rather than reforming the NHS, they are in fact destroying it? So PM Cameron is actively denying a voice to anyone that might object to his make-the-Tories-even-richer-by-going-private scheme. When a number of Lords and MPs look to benefit personally from us all going private, it makes it all the more sinister.

A selection for your perusal:

• The former Conservative Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley is a Director of BUPA, the health insurance, private hospital and care group.

• Baroness Cumberlege of Newick, Former Tory health minister, runs Cumberlege Connections, a political networking firm that works “extensively” with the pharmaceutical industry

• Baron Newton of Braintree – Advisor to Oasis Healthcare on dentistry and general healthcare matters.

• Lord Ballyedmond – Chairman of pharmaceutical company Norbrook Laboratories.

• Lord Bell – Chairman of Chime Communications group, whose lobbying clients include Southern Cross, BT Health and AstraZeneca. Tim Bell has a conviction for ‘wilfuly, openly and obscenely’ exposing himself ‘with intent to insult a female’ under Section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act.

•  David Cameron - Nursing and care home tycoon Dolar Popat has given the Conservatives £209,000. The Ugandan-born dad-of-three has amassed an estimated £42million fortune as founder and chief of TLC Group, which provides services for the elderly. Mr Cameron made the businessman a peer shortly after entering No10 last May, and Lord Popat’s donations include a £25,000 gift registered a week after the Tories’ health reforms were unveiled last July.

HT @socialindepth

(For a comprehensive list of MPs and Lords set to financially gain from the dismantling of the NHS, please visit http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.com/2012/02/nhs-privatisation-compilation-of.html)

With all of this going on right under our noses, we have a right to be angry. We have the democratic right to protest, apparently we live in a ‘democracy’. Mark Donne agrees, posing the question to Noam Chomsky “what he thought the outcome would have been if the nearly 500,000 who have signed a yet-to-be presented petition against the privatisation of the NHS had joined the other 3,000 in occupying Westminster Bridge in late October.” Noam simply replied, “You would have no bill”.

Although petitions are proving to be entirely useless, history will remember we opposed this bill in our hundreds and thousands. To ensure an outcome, we need a million (wo)man march. Somehow we must fight back against the scare tactics employed to silence us. Disgruntled citizens the world over are saying enough is enough, organising marches, rallying, making their governments fear them and the will of the people.

Why do we remain so afraid of ours?

REFERENCES

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mark-donne-could-a-renewed-activism-translate-into-serious-pressure-on-the-government-6256633.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/feb/19/david-cameron-nhs-summit-criticism

Redefining Feminism

I am a feminist. There, I’ve said it. I was once told that real feminists didn’t have to announce it to the world. This, after I’d made my bold statement to a police officer who was happily winding me up about how he wouldn’t employ a woman of my age as I was liable to get pregnant. I felt my use of the word had been appropriate for that situation but there were people that didn’t agree. Other women, in fact. A softly, softly approach would have sufficed, one where I perhaps ignored his comment or laughed along. After all, we didn’t want to upset the policeman helping us with our work. I wasn’t to express that I worked for a feminist organisation either. Although our work was about helping women affected by male perpetrated crime, in an all-female environment, we could not align ourselves with the dirty feminist word. Because it might upset the big men.

A search on freedictionary.com suggests the meaning of the word is as I expect:

feminist [ˈfɛmɪnɪst]

n
(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) a person who advocates equal rights for women

adj
(Government, Politics & Diplomacy) of, relating to, or advocating feminism

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Feminist: one who believes that women should have equal rights. But by calling myself a feminist, I am often perceived as something entirely different. There certainly are men, and women, who genuinely believe that women should NOT have equal rights to men and for them, feminist means murdering promiscuous butch lesbian prostitute but there are also those for whom feminist has become a grotesque caricature, one that prevents people who do believe in equality of choice for men and women from acknowledging or using it.

A friend I had known for a couple of years once decided she was not a feminist as she was happy looking after her home, husband and children. She also thought that I would have a low opinion of her for not having the professional ambition to go out and work. It took a while to convince her that feminism was supportive of women choosing to be mothers. The key word for me was happy. It was not about conforming to gender specific roles, but whether she was being forced to be a stay at home mother. In her case, she was not. Many will choose to stay with their children and many will not. And that’s ok too. Children need a secure attachment; they have two parents. The decision comes down to those two people and how they will manage their lives. It is not ok for strangers to dictate to either men or women how they raise their families and whether they have children at all. Least of all to look down your nose at them (Liz Jones really has riled me today).

The inappropriate use of the word feminist, originally by men, has soiled it in a way that it has never recovered. It implies aggression, intolerance and bitterness. When I expressed my beliefs to that policeman, I had not used the word as a threat; I had used it in disbelief. A representative of a partner agency working towards eliminating repeat incidents of abuse in the borough was relishing using words that made him sound like a misogynist. When Liz Jones used the word feminist, she said it with a sneer. She used the word feminist as one who does not believe in equal rights for men and women; she used it with the implication that men are inferior. She does not really believe this, it is what she has to tell herself. Liz feels women who are stupid enough to get pregnant and let their looks go are mumsy types without a feminist bone. But this is because she ‘secretly’ regrets not having children.

And there are many ‘feminists’ out there using it for the same reason.

Tory Story

I was a small child when I first heard the word Tories and my understanding of it stretched to the name of their leader and how she stole all the milk. I had another run in with them aged 8 when they were voted in again; I remember my teacher was in a particularly sombre mood that day. I grew up believing politics wouldn’t do anything for me, that voting was pointless. Until the last election.

I suddenly found myself in a world where our forests were of no importance. Where agencies I’d found invaluable through my work were having their funding cut and given to coercive ‘charities’. Services for the most vulnerable women and children in our country. Libraries, they were getting the chop too. I had begun an access course with a view to a degree in criminal psychology but totting up the sums, I had to make a serious decision to discontinue. Then came the benefit cuts, people no longer being able to afford their homes and the government legislation that would lead to seriously sick and disabled people cut short of their lifeline. Anyone would think the Tories wanted people to die. Further proof of this could be found in what they had planned for our beloved NHS.

I recently had my first encounter with a patient being advised to pay for her own operation, at the Atos offices. She was quite clearly struggling along on crutches; she didn’t sound or look healthy. I didn’t want to pry but she obviously needed treatment except she wasn’t going to get it. What an utterly bizarre experience. I’ve tried to understand the kinds of operations we will have to pay for and I guess this probably means ‘elective’ procedures. The cyst I had removed had 1.2 litres of fluid in it and whilst I’d have preferred a course of magic shrinking pills, this was not possible and the excellent team at Kings convinced me to have it removed. That was an ‘elective’ procedure, the consent form said so. Imagine having to live with something like that because you couldn’t afford to pay for it. Furthermore, if I were able to afford a decent private healthcare plan, would they cover for pre-existing conditions? What a mess they’ve made, those Tories. What a dirty word it is.

I voted Labour at the last local election. On the advice of a good friend who was by no means Labour herself, but had acknowledged that old people were less likely to die in the winter. It was a good start. The Tories don’t care about the old; they don’t care about the young. They don’t care about the poor, or the middle. They have a particular aversion to women, especially those going it alone. They don’t like students, or those that don’t know their place. They haven’t got a care in hell for those facing persecution or eviction. They just want your money. (*there is no benefit in talking about the Fib Gems at all)

If we don’t like where they’re cutting/spending our money, we should stop giving it to them. By continuing to pay, we are complicit in their actions. Time to research how to make this a reality, all comments are welcome, advice would be handy too.

Thank You NHS

I wanted to thank you, NHS, for bringing my sister and me into the world safely. We were a couple of months premature and our parents thought we wouldn’t survive but you took care of us and nurtured us to health. My dad was a mechanic and my mum, a housewife. They couldn’t have done it without you. You were also there when my baby sister and brother were born.

You helped save my twin sister’s life when she was five. She was scalded by a kettle full of boiling water. I thought she would die that day but as my sister later told me, the quick thinking and heartfelt actions of the doctors and nurses with their buckets of iced water meant she was home the next day, slathered in ointment and bound in bandages. She went back to the hospital every week until she was healed and they even offered to graft new skin where the old was scarred. Thank you for saving her life and her skin.

A short while later, possibly a reaction to seeing my twin suffer in the way she had, I was admitted to hospital with high blood pressure and loss of appetite. I was barely 6 but my memories of that time were filled with highs and lows. The lows being the tests the doctors had to subject me to and the highs, the nurses that made the days a little sunnier. The sense of fun that there is on a children’s ward despite the sickness; friendships are forged, pain’s forgotten. Thank you, NHS, for your amazing staff and their time.

When one of my teenaged friends decided she’d had enough and took a bottle of painkillers, it was the same children’s ward that asked her why she did it, and they listened. They helped her access the right services, so that she could talk to someone. In the end, SHE was thankful that they’d saved her.

Thank you for providing clinics and walk in centres. When my GP wouldn’t believe that I knew my own body and that I most certainly was not just another female not drinking enough water, I demanded another opinion and was begrudgingly referred for a scan. Thank you NHS, for discovering a 17cm cyst on my left ovary, and referring me promptly to have it removed. They did the same again when it had refilled to 14cm, just 6 months later. They reassured me they would do their utmost to ensure it had some remaining functionality and they were true to their word.

I wanted to thank you NHS, for the safe births of my niece and nephew. My sisters are both thankful too. I, especially want to thank you for the support my niece received when she was diagnosed with Malignant Infantile Osteopetrosis. She was going to die at 6 months. She survived having a shunt fitted to drain the water off her brain followed by, nerve decompression surgery, a form of chemo to kill off her immune system so that they could build her back up again with those amazing stem cells, and a cocktail of drugs designed to prevent her body from rejecting them. Sadly, we lost her baby sister but I still want to thank the NHS for trying.

I want to thank the NHS for the way they have supported me over the last few years. Operations, babies dying, babies suffering life threatening complications and a car crash that tipped me into PTSD have all taken their toll. I have a slipped disc in my back, the GP though it could be muscular until I had an MRI scan. They’re really expensive, those things. Thank you NHS, for thinking I was worth it.

I wouldn’t be alive today, if it wasn’t for the NHS.