Women and girls in newly arrived migrant communities are at particular risk of gender based violence, but there is currently a lack of appropriate services to meet their needs.
- There is an overall shortage of services to tackle gender based violence, a situation worsened by funding cuts and changes to commissioning practices.
- Existing mainstream services may lack the appropriate expertise and resources to address the particular needs of women in newly arrived migrant communities who are experiencing gender based violence
- There is a paucity of specialist GBV services that can attend to the particular needs of migrant, asylum seeking and refugee women in relation to issues of violence.
There is therefore an urgent need for funds to be directed towards tackling gender based violence in newly arrived migrant communities. These funds need to be directed to
- Projects that seek to prevent gender based violence such as the Healthy Relationships programme run by Shpresa and Solace Women’s Aid
- Services that are specifically directed at helping women and children in newly arrived migrant communities experiencing sexual and domestic violence to escape violence
- Research into the particular and varied needs of migrant, asylum seeking and refugee women in newly arrived migrant communities experiencing violence to build up a clearer, more detailed picture of their experiences and needs.
Supporting partnerships between mainstream domestic and sexual violence services and community groups working with migrant, refugee and asylum seeking women is vital in tackling gender based violence in newly arrived migrant communities. Routing access to a specialist service through a community group that the women trust, and with which they identify, makes access possible for groups of women who would otherwise not seek or be able to access help.
Given the financial costs of gender based violence to services and the non-economic and economic costs to the lives of women, children, families and communities, funders need to consider the economic and social benefits of funding small-scale high-impact partnership projects, such as the Empower Women’s Project, that focus on the prevention of violence against women and children and address the needs of migrant, asylum seeking and refugee women experiencing violence.
In enabling smaller community groups to put in applications, as funders you’ll need to step outside your comfort zone and think proactively about how you support such groups to develop partnerships and/or to make successful funding applications.
Funders need to think about the accessibility of funding applications and the training needs of community groups in developing the skills to be able to apply successfully for funds. We recommend you ask the questions listed in the checklist that you can download below:
You can download this checklist as a PDF from our Resources page.
Empower Women Toolkit 