Written evidence from Women’s Adi Federation of England (BEC0017)

Introduction

Women’s Aid is the national charity working to end domestic abuse against women and children. Women’s Aid was founded in 1974 and, over the past 44 years, has been at the forefront of shaping and coordinating responses to domestic abuse through practice, research and policy. We empower survivors by keeping their voices at the heart of our work, working with and for women and children by listening to them and responding to their needs. We are a federation of over 180 organisations who provide just under 300 local lifesaving services to women and children across the country. We hold the largest national data set on domestic abuse, and use research and evidence to inform all of our work. Our campaigns achieve change in policy, practice and awareness, encouraging healthy relationships and helping to build a future where domestic abuse is no longer tolerated.

Women’s Aid welcomes the opportunity to submit evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee’s Inquiry into the benefit cap.  We will restrict our comments to our area of expertise – the experiences, and impact, of the benefit cap on survivors of domestic abuse and the services they rely on. Since the Committee’s first inquiry, Women’s Aid supported the Child Poverty Action Group’s judicial review of the lowered benefit cap as it applies to lone parents and provided expert evidence in this case - R(DA and Others) v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (SSWP) - which is referenced throughout this submission.

Summary and recommendations

• The benefit cap impacts disproportionately on women survivors of domestic abuse, particularly those from black, minority and ethnic (BME) communities. Most survivors experience economic abuse, which creates a major barrier to leaving the relationship and can leave women without access to money for housing, food and basic essentials. By reducing survivors’ independent income further, the benefit cap is increasing the barriers they face in escaping a perpetrator and rebuilding their lives in safety. For lone parents with young children, the impacts are perverse and were judged unlawful in the High Court. We recommend that all survivors escaping abuse are exempt from the benefit cap to ensure this policy does not put survivors’ safety at risk.

• The benefit cap is having serious unintended consequences for refuges, which the Department for Work Pensions (DWP) must resolve: the reduction in the cap amounts has meant that the exemption for refuges, which DWP delivered through Housing Benefit regulations, is no longer fully effective; and the policy has meant that in some cases refuge services are unable to secure safe move-on accommodation that women can afford. This can lead to ‘bed-blocking’ - where women ready to leave a refuge are stuck in the service, blocking emergency beds that others desperately need. DWP must ensure that women in refuges are fully exempt from the cap, and introduce a transitional period of exemption for women leaving refuge to ensure move-on accommodation is secured.

• Survivors impacted by the benefit cap are forced to rely on Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) to resolve both immediate and long-term affordability problems. The nature of DHPs means that funding is discretionary and does not provide a long-term and effective solution - particularly in a context of continued concern about local authority responses to domestic abuse. Whilst DHPs remain a temporary solution, it is essential that funding adequately meets demand and - given the extreme and life-threatening nature of their circumstances and the critical need for safe housing - survivors continue to be prioritised for DHP allocations.

• We are highly concerned about the cumulative impact of welfare reform policies on survivors’ safety. We recommend the Domestic Abuse Bill establishes a new duty on government to assess the impacts of all new welfare reform policies on survivors, and specifically on their ability to leave an abusive relationship.

A. Impact on survivors of domestic abuse

1. As anticipated,[1] the lower benefit cap has had disproportionate impacts on single women with children. 71% of capped households are single-parent families - of which 76% had at least one child under the age of five years and 31% had a child aged under two.[2] Around 90% of single parents are mothers.[3] Women from BME communities are also particularly affected, as they tend to have higher proportions of large families. As women are statistically the vast majority of victims of repeated patterns of domestic abuse taking place within a context of power and control,[4] the Government must ensure this policy works safely for survivors.

2. Most survivors – regardless of income level – experience economic abuse some point during, or after, the abusive relationship. These are severe, long-term forms of abuse and control - including exploitation of income and time, financial monitoring, restricting access to resources, and accruing debt. Economic abuse leaves survivors without the ability to meet basic needs for themselves and their children and is a major barrier to leaving an abuser.  In a survey of over 100 survivors of domestic abuse by Women’s Aid and the Trades Union Congress (TUC), 52% per cent of respondents living with their abuser said they could not afford to leave.[5]

3. Survivors also face complex barriers to securing and maintaining employment. An estimated one in five victims in the UK have to take time off because of the abuse.[6] Perpetrators often prevent a survivor’s efforts to work and bar their access to education, training and employment over a long period of time - which can pose significant problems when trying to regain a job. Most survivors will want to access employment when ready, but the severe trauma they have experienced as a result of psychological, emotional and physical abuse also results in significant barriers to working - both during the relationship, and after it has ended. Women resident in refuge often have to give up paid employment - as a result of them moving to a different location too far away from previous employment, or the fact that a regular travel pattern to work would compromise the refuge’s secret location if they were followed.

4. Providing financial help and assistance through welfare benefits is vital for enabling survivors to escape abusive relationships, supporting them to provide for themselves and their children, and ensuring they can regain independence. It is important to note that women in such circumstances face severe risk of harm; data from the Femicide Census revealed that 75.2% of women killed by men in 2016 were killed at their own home, or the home they shared with the perpetrator.[7] Survivors desperately need support and assistance to reach safety, and welfare benefits are essential in this regard.

5. Women’s Aid and the TUC’s survey found many survivors had low household incomes and were reliant on benefits - 30.8% received benefits and 35.8% received tax credits.  As survivors have reported to Women’s Aid:

• “I couldn't rely on him for childcare nor could I rely on him financially. Without the welfare benefits I would have struggled hugely to feed, house and clothe myself and my child.”

• “[Welfare benefits] helped me to afford the rent on a nice, safe house for my children and I to live in. They have also helped with my child care costs so I could go back to work”.

6. The lower benefit cap intensifies the financial barriers women face in leaving an abuser. It is particularly severe for those with young children, as there is no free childcare before children are two, and survivors who have fled far from their support network struggle to access the free childcare or flexible work required to escape the cap. Those most severely impacted are therefore those least likely to be able to move into work, the Government’s intention for the policy. Over four in five are not expected to seek work in order to receive benefits, due to ill-health, disability or caring responsibilities for children.[8] We therefore welcomed the High Court ruling in 2017 that the benefit cap discriminates against single parents with children under two and is causing “real misery (…) to no good purpose”. We provided expert evidence in support of the claimants in R(DA and Others) v SSWP, two of whom were survivors of domestic abuse.[9]

7. One of the claimants, WBA, had been homeless after escaping her violent husband, who controlled all the family’s finances. She was a lone parent of five children, the youngest of whom - 11 months - was conceived as a result of rape from her former husband. The benefit cap trapped her in statutorily overcrowded housing, because her large number of children meant she couldn’t afford any alternative form of accommodation. She slept in the living room, and the house had no table or chairs. WBA had not previously been reliant on benefits but was simply unable to work due to leaving a violent relationship, homelessness, becoming pregnant through rape and having childcare responsibilities. As she stated, the “imposition of the benefit cap (…) far from helping me to find work, has made it harder for me to do so.”

8. It is important to note that, had WBA remained with her violent husband, she would have avoided the benefit cap. We are concerned that the cap is creating a barrier and disincentive for women to leave abusive relationships, directly undermining the Government’s commitment to transform the national response to domestic abuse through the forthcoming Domestic Abuse Bill.

9. Survivors’ experiences of insecurity and destitution demonstrate the perverse impacts of this policy, which is not only failing to deliver its stated aims of incentivising work and impacting those least able to move into work, but is resulting in women making stark choices between suffering domestic abuse, poverty and safety.

10. DWP must recognise the financial barriers preventing survivors from leaving perpetrators or reporting the abuse, and the significant constraints faced in securing childcare and well-paid employment after fleeing their homes. We recommend that the Government exempt all lone parents with children under two, and survivors escaping domestic abuse, from the benefit cap.

A. Unintended consequences of the benefit cap on refuges

11. Refuges are a life-saving service used in extreme cases of domestic abuse, which women and children escape to when they have exhausted all other options for safety. Over the year 2016-17, Women’s Aid estimates that 13,414 women with 14,353 children and young people were supported in refuges in England. We wish to draw the Committee’s attention to two unintended and unresolved consequences of the benefit cap on refuges, which DWP must take immediate action to resolve.

The benefit cap exemption

12. In recognition of the unique needs, circumstances and challenges facing women living in refuge, the Government exempted refuges, along with other forms of ‘exempt accommodation’ from the cap. The exemption was delivered through the Housing Benefit and Universal Credit Regulations 2014, which state that the cap will not apply to “third and social sector refuges, including local authority refuges, where the claimant is accommodated there because they are fleeing domestic violence.”[10]

13. No changes were made to this exemption when the benefit cap was lowered in the Welfare Reform & Work Act 2016.  However, since the cap was lowered it has emerged that the exemption for refuges is no longer fully effective. As the exemption was delivered through Housing Benefit regulations, it only applies to the Housing Benefit element of the benefit cap - and not any other working age benefit entitlements. As a result, our member services have reported that some women in refuge have received notifications stating that their benefit entitlement is being reduced – because their income from other benefits exceed the cap amounts.

14. Survivors living in refuge with large numbers of children are likely to be those affected. There are significant numbers of women with children living in refuge. Women’s Aid Annual Survey found that: 61.7% of women in refuge on just one day in 2017 had children (aged under 18) with them; 14.3% had more than two children (aged under 18) with them; and 41.1% had children aged under five with them. [11] 

15. In response to these concerns, DWP have stated that, because Housing Benefit is exempt from the benefit cap, most women in refuges will not be impacted. Although we acknowledge that the number of women affected will not be high, the evidence from our member services about the impacts of the cap has been concerning. In certain cases, women have been unable to afford living in the refuge due to the significant reduction in their entitlements, which is of urgent concern. It is also worrying that the DWP’s benefit cap helpline has been unable to provide clear information on this issue and has issued conflicting and contradictory guidance to refuges.

16. The delivery of the exemption through Housing Benefit regulations and the subsequent reduction in the cap amounts has had unintended consequences for refuges, which DWP did not foresee. Women’s Aid recommends that claimants living in refuges are exempt from the cap in full - and not only by removing the Housing Benefit element from cap calculations – to ensure they are afforded the protection originally intended by government. As an interim measure, before the full exemption is delivered, survivors in refuge affected by the lower benefit cap must always be prioritised for DHP allocations.

Move-on accommodation

17. The length of time that a woman needs to stay in a refuge varies but, on average, a refuge space becomes available every four months.[12] Providing safe ‘move-on’ from refuge is therefore a key part of the service. Once a woman is settled and secure, refuge support staff help her to apply for suitable accommodation for the next stage of her journey. As the woman will have typically moved local authority area into the refuge, and may have an existing tenancy in another area, she usually requires dedicated support for resettlement and securing move-on accommodation.

18. Securing safe and permanent accommodation for women and children survivors is, however, a serious challenge. If a woman has no ‘local connection’ to the area, accessing social housing can be very challenging. Experiences of insecure housing and homelessness are safely common. Women frequently have to make several moves - over weeks, months and even years - after leaving refuge before they can be permanently rehoused. Research by Solace Women’s Aid in 2015 found that 87% of women who left refuge continued to live in temporary accommodation.[13] Insecure and temporary accommodation can see survivors and their children housed in unsuitable properties that are inappropriate for their needs - and can be highly unstable, unsettling and unsafe.

19. A lack of move on accommodation, decreasing availability of social housing and the high cost of accommodation in the private rented sector are key problems facing refuges in resettling women and children. As one service responding to our Annual Survey stated, “Most of the women find it a battle to get rehoused (…) they can be in temporary [accommodation] between six months up to five years depending on where they have approached. This can cause stress if they need to get children to school as they are often settled at school while they are with us then to have to move them again and possibly again after that. Children need routines and stability. These are our most challenging issues within refuge.”” The benefit cap has compounded these problems and meant that services in regions outside of London are also increasingly affected.  

20. Problems with securing move-on accommodation are of course hugely problematic for a refuge’s ability to meet current levels of demand - increasing ‘bed-blocking’. This where survivors ready to leave refuge are forced to stay within the service because they are unable to secure affordable new accommodation, essentially ‘blocking’ beds for other women and children who desperately need them. In the context of severe and unmet demand for refuge - 94 women and 90 women were turned away from services on just one day in 2017[14] - ‘bed blocking’ is a severe concern.

21. The difficulties with ‘move-on’ also have serious implications for a survivor’s ability to rebuild an independent life. The impact of frequent moves and insecure housing on a survivor’s journey are numerous - including disruption of support networks, children forced to move school multiple times, financial instability, difficulties with finding and sustaining work, education or training, and continued reliance on benefits. It not only results in poor outcomes and recovery from the trauma women and children have experienced, but increases costs to the public sector.

22. The experiences of DA, in R (DA and Others) v SSWP, are typical of women and children in refuges throughout the country. On the advice of the police and social services, DA fled her abusive partner to a refuge whilst pregnant, and with her four year old son. When she was ready to move on, she found she was financially trapped in the refuge - as upon leaving she would have lost her benefit cap exemption, so her overall income would have decreased so significantly that and accommodation in the private rented sector was unaffordable. She was also unable to access social housing as the refuge she as living in was a local authority with a ‘five year residence’ test for a social home. The inability to move on to secure, self-contained accommodation had severe impacts on the mental health and recovery of DA and her child.

23. If the national network of refuges is to continue providing life-saving shelter for survivors who need it, a secure and consistent move-on pathway from refuge to secure accommodation is vital.  This must include transitional periods of exemption from specific welfare reforms, which are currently barring refuges from securing move-on accommodation. The Government already recognises such transitional exemptions are required to enable move-on; for example, young women who have spent more than three months in a refuge are exempted from the Under 25 Shared Under Accommodation Rate.

24. Women’s Aid recommends that DWP implements a transitional period of exemption from the benefit cap for women moving-on from refuge, to ensure they can secure safe and permanent accommodation.

A. Discretionary Housing Payments

25. Discretionary Housing Payments (DHPs) have played a key role in alleviating the impact of the benefit cap to date. DHP spending to mitigate the benefit cap has increased significantly since it was lowered - from £25 million in 2015-16 to £67.5million in 2017-18. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies have shown this has rendered the net fiscal savings of the cap “all the more trivial.”[15]

26. The uncertain and temporary nature of DHPs means they are an unsustainable and inadequate means of protecting vulnerable families fleeing domestic abuse. Survivors are required to make repeat applications for DHPs, creating further stress, anxiety and insecurity and barring their recovery and ability to rebuild independence.

27. We share previous concerned raised by the Committee about the ‘postcode lottery’ in DHP allocations. Whilst we welcome updated guidance for local authorities stating that DHPs should be used to support victims of domestic abuse to access safety[16], we remain concerned about the discretionary nature of the system in context where local authority responses to domestic abuse are inconsistent - and often poor. Our recent ‘Nowhere to Turn’ report found that inadequate responses from housing authorities present barriers to survivors’ safety, with women reporting victim blaming attitudes and poor responses from professionals who lack a comprehensive understanding of domestic abuse. Practices included telling survivors to return to the perpetrator and only seek help if the abuse ‘gets worse’. [17]

28. We have concerns about a method of protection for survivors that is reliant on local authority discretion. We recommend that, given the extreme and life-threatening nature of their circumstances and their critical need for safe housing, DWP clarify that survivors are a foremost priority for DHP allocations.

A. Cumulative impact of welfare reforms

29. It is not possible to assess the impact of the benefit cap without considering the cumulative impact of a range of welfare reform policies on survivors. The benefit cap, two child tax credit limit, under-occupation deduction, decreasing use of secure ‘lifetime’ tenancies, and a number of other changes to the tax and welfare system are having multiplication effects and a disproportionate impact on women, which is acutely felt by survivors of domestic abuse.

30. A recent analysis found that the cumulative impact of tax and welfare reforms since 2010 has been regressive and has had severe impacts on those with protected characteristics, including specific BME communities and women - who are disproportionately impacted by domestic abuse. Across the whole income distribution, women lose around £400 per year compared with £30 for men. The changes have been felt disproportionately by households with children and lone parents lose an average of £5,250 a year - almost one-fifth of their annual income.[18] It is also been estimated that cuts within the benefit system will push 700,000 children into poverty.[19] The danger that these policies pose for survivors of domestic abuse, who often rely on welfare benefits to escape their abusers, is clear.
31. Welfare reforms are restricting the resources women need to leave; we are receiving direct reports from our member services about the stark choices between poverty and safety that women are being forced to make as a result of welfare changes. We are concerned the cumulative impact of a range of welfare reforms risks undermining the Government’s intention to transform the response to domestic abuse - including economic forms of abuse - through the proposed new Domestic Abuse Bill. Although the consultation on the Bill stated the intention to ‘identify practical issues that make it harder for a victim to escape’ and ‘consider what can be done to help victims of economic abuse’, no mention of welfare reform policy was made. 

32. It is vital that the impacts - and unintended consequences - of welfare reform policies on survivors’ safety are robustly assessed before implementation in the future. We will be publishing evidence from our ‘Annual Survey’ about the direct impacts of economic abuse and welfare reform on survivors’ lives in January 2018, which we look forward to sharing with the Committee.

33. We recommend the forthcoming Domestic Abuse Bill includes a duty on Government to assess all new welfare reform policies for their impact on survivors, with specific focus on if policies increase the barriers facing survivors to leaving abusers.

September 2018