Racism and other intersecting barriers to accessing safety and support
We need to work actively to make spaces and services safe and inclusive for women from all backgrounds and situations, and remove barriers to support due to migrant status, ethnicity, language, neurodiversity, disability and other aspects of lived experience.
Racism and other intersecting barriers to accessing safety and support
We need to work actively to make spaces and services safe and inclusive for women from all backgrounds and situations, and remove barriers to support due to migrant status, ethnicity, language, neurodiversity, disability and other aspects of lived experience.
Communities like ours need to work actively to provide safe spaces for women who have experienced domestic/sexual violence often in addition to immigration abuse, harmful practices such as FGM, sexual exploitation, forced marriage, trafficking and HBV/A perpetrated through varying cultural and social lenses by intimate partners, family members and or community members. A safe space may be a specialist service, or a respectful and anti-racist organisation providing help around domestic abuse. A safe space is often needed to address other barriers, particularly for women who are destitute and homeless, or living in unstable or unsafe housing without support networks. Safe spaces are needed by migrant women who also have complex immigration issues, no recourse to public funds, face racial discrimination and harassment, hate crime and economic exploitation. Being trauma informed also means properly listening to and hearing women’s and girls’ lived experience, in all its diverse, cultural and unique aspects, and shaping our understanding of safe spaces accordingly.
This service has saved my mental health and has provided a safe service whilst helping with coping mechanisms for the future.
- Lena
Latest news
VOICES Public Survey
VOICES is developing a new five year strategy and we’d like to hear from you. Please click the link below to fill in our short form. You will be helping VOICES improve our services and to ensure we continue to meet the needs of the local community: https://forms.gle/ggNTr6WXw63tPa4T8 VOICES is an independent charity based in…
Welcome to our new CEO Emily Denne to the VOICES team
VOICES would like to welcome our new CEO Emily Denne to the team. Emily has been working in this sector for over 15 years, is a trauma-informed specialist practitioner and is a keen advocate for ensuring lived experience is heard in policy and practice. Emily is delighted to be joining VOICES – having been drawn to…