The 'new normal' of combined work-home living, could mean 'ongoing prisons for women and children living with abusers', according to Mayo Women’s Support Services.
Mayo Women’s Support Services states it is now preparing for an anticipated further surge in calls for help by women and children, who have been contained with their abusers in Mayo for the past nine weeks and who may now finally find the space and freedom to reach out for help as the country begins to open up.
Josephine McGourty of Mayo Women’s Support Services said it, along with services throughout the country, is now reconfiguring to ensure that it can provide the best levels of safe, professional support for women and children.
Mayo Women’s Support Services is a member of Safe Ireland, the national hub for 38 domestic violence services throughout the country. Together, the network is putting in place a united recovery plan to respond to what will be a “new normal”, she said.
She commented that over the lock-down period, while the outreach remained busy, the phone lines were quieter than usual.
"It is the silence that is ominous," she said. "Our greatest concern, is that women may be finding it much more difficult to make contact for support. Previously women may have contacted services when they or their partners were at work or out of the house, or when children were in school. Those little windows of freedom are being cut down.
"Our services have been open and have been operating throughout this crisis. As we begin to open up here in Mayo, we are available, now more than ever."
Josephine McGourty continued: "We believe that many women may have been living with intolerable control and abuse over the past two months. It is important that they know that we are here and that we can support them to be safe in their own homes, or help re-home them if this is what is needed."
McGourty added that Mayo Women’s Support Services, along with services throughout the country, had become more united in their resolve that the sector “cannot go back” to the way things were operating.
She said that Covid-19 had exposed the fragility of the sector and the deep fault lines that have existed for decades in the state’s response to domestic violence. Mayo Women’s Support Services has been advocating for women fleeing from domestic violence during Covid-19, to be able to receive rent supplement, for example, which has so far been denied by Government.
She also said that Covid 19 could mean that the 'home-work divide' will be reconfigured in the long-term, raising serious issues for the risk and invisibility of domestic violence.
"What we now regard as ‘the private' may be radically changed with technology likely to reconfigure our lives utterly," she said, adding: "We have to seriously consider if the future will make an absolute prison of these combined spaces for many women and children? We have to be prepared to respond to this new normal. The fractured and piece-meal state response to domestic violence that we had for decades simply won’t do."
Safe Ireland established an Emergency Covid-19 Fund to support the emergency needs of women and children throughout the crisis. This is distributed directly through frontline services like Mayo Women’s Support Services.
So far, the fund has provided for practical but essential items like food, heating oil, utility bills, transport costs or materials and appliances needed for new accommodation, for example. The fund remains open for donations and will continue to be used, now more than ever, as the country opens up, concluded McGourty.
