Women Rough Sleepers in Europe

Homelessness and Victims of Domestic Abuse

Moss, Kate, Singh, Paramjit

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781447334606
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Poverty in Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Women's rough sleeping is a major issue across Europe and is especially problematic within the current economic climate. Based on a European Union DAPHNE III-funded project, this important book tells the story of the women and organisations that took part in the study. Revealing a number of truths about women's rough sleeping across Europe, the authors argue that there is little or no specific provision for this vulnerable and hard to reach group. The book focuses on the adoption of effective policy, strategies and services to meet the needs of homeless women, specifically women rough sleepers who are the victims of domestic abuse. It will be a valuable resource for academics and students of criminology, social policy, law, social work and probation, as well as housing/homelessness practitioners, policy makers, local authorities and NGOs.

FIVE

Analysing and understanding the problem: service providers’ stories

We established in Chapter Four that ethnographic interviewing is a type of qualitative research that combines immersive observation and either structured or semi-structured face-to-face interviews. This method of interviewing is a form of contextual inquiry that is useful in gathering qualitative data about the individuals whom you have targeted in your study. This was an ideal method for us to collect the type of data we wanted from both women rough sleepers themselves and from the organisations that worked with them. In all cases, we accessed organisations at their own place of work. In this way we were able to carry out the interviews in a setting that was more natural and familiar for service providers. This kind of observation, which takes place within a normal environment can thus uncover important details to the interviewer concerning the attitudes and behaviours of those being interviewed. Clearly, issues of access and willingness to participate in the study, made this quite difficult to achieve and it is testament to the perseverance of the interviewers that so many were successfully carried out. This also would not have been possible if it had not been for the huge support received by the researchers, from service providers and other agencies. We accessed service providers from the West Midlands to start with but then went further afield through agencies that we knew. Our partners did the same in their own countries. The samples were entirely random in this sense. Within this chapter figures and statistics are not given, since the purpose of this chapter is provide the reader with a sense of the rich qualitative data that was collected and how that data was analytically themed. Chapter Six will provide the quantitative data, however, before this – and to elucidate the sensitive life stories in each of these interviews – we want to demonstrate how each transcript was analysed by reducing it into the following themed headings.

Knowledge

Within this theme, we include the data we collected from service providers about the characteristics of their service users; any training that they had received specifically in relation to women rough sleepers or their experiences of violence; their knowledge of the extent of the problem of women rough sleepers, the services that were available and any gaps they could identify in services; and, finally, their knowledge of legislation, policies and professional guidelines.

Delivery

Within this theme we report on the data that we gathered from service providers in relation to the existence of multi-agency working; preventative measures; local strategies; and examples of good practice.

Impact

Within this theme the data gathered relates to why women rough sleepers might be falling through the social safety net; what factors SP felt might bring women rough sleepers back into mainstream society; any operational and policy changes they would like to see; and, finally, any general issues that they wished to raise that the interview had not covered.

As with the previous chapter where we reported on the qualitative data from our interviews with women rough sleepers, within this chapter we present the findings of the interviews with service providers conveyed to us through the qualitative interviews within the themes above. Again, these narratives are rich and intense in nature and it is crucial to get a flavour of what service providers told us during the course of this research in order to subsequently understand the context and human nature of the subsequent overview of this analysis which appears in Chapter Seven. Within each theme we take examples from each country to provide the reader with some sense of comparison and a narrative is provided for each section summarising the themes.

Service provider organisations

UK organisations

Within the UK we undertook interviews with 29 people across 20 service organisations or agencies that provide rough sleeping or homelessness services. The types of agencies that were interviewed included local councils, non-governmental organisations, the police, and the fire service, charities and voluntary and community sector organisations.

‘My job is to prevent arson specifically in buildings that are not dwellings. My focus is the buildings that are void and derelict. Not only do we find void and derelict buildings but the local crews who turn out to the fires in these buildings need to know what danger they gonna find inside… so I walk the insides and as a result I regularly come across signs of and evidence of rough sleeping and drug use.’

‘We provide just over 10,000 council properties… so obviously the housing service or housing management… and also legislation requiring us to provide a service to homeless households.’

‘I manage services male and female, semi-independent accommodation, fully supported male and female accommodation. Age group 16 to 25 year olds.’

‘The role of my agency is to support customers who do sleep rough or who are at risk of rough sleeping. We got a rough sleepers’ team that is dealing with the customers who are roofless and on the street.’

Hungarian organisations

Organisations interviewed in Hungary included night shelters, hostels, special crisis centres and women’s temporary shelters. The majority of people interviewed had a social work background and had been educated in social work. These people were working on the ‘front line’ of their organisations with clients and offered a range of services including accommodation, outreach work, counselling and groups for abused women.

‘I work at the women’s temporary shelter, where it is my job during the first few appointments to get to know what problems my clients have, and start to find solutions. This is where the process comes to a halt, since there are really no opportunities. Our role is constantly changing based on how the government relates to helping the poor and needy.’

‘This is a hostel. People who stay here have to pay 9,600 HUF every month for their accommodation. They do not have to pay the first month, but from the second month. So many would stay here for two months and then leave.’

‘We are a night shelter, so we mostly provide basic services: showers, laundry. We do not ask for any official document from the women who spend the night here, we ask for their name only. We give them medicine if needed, without registering their health insurance, or checking for their legal address.’

‘Services? She gets, let’s say, a bed, toilet paper, shower cream and supper in the winter (but you must not think of a big three-course dinner but rather bread with butter, or fat, or cheese, or ham, jam and tea)… And that is all, really. There is a physician, a psychiatrist, and dentist as well. Lung screening is a requirement.’

Spanish organisations

A range of service providers were interviewed in Spain which included psychologists, social workers, the head of the homeless and social exclusion bureau in Seville, professionals working in hostels, shelters and foster homes and the Deputy Mayor of Malaga.

‘We are a centre for homeless people in general and for women who are on the street. They are met by our services, we try to give comprehensive care among the entire group of women who come to us because they are in an abusive situation.’

‘My role is that I’m the director of the shelter of Seville. I manage the emergency appeal of Seville, the shelter and we have four supervised apartments.’

‘Our centre takes in women victims who report their husbands and have no resources.’

Swedish organisations

A range of service providers were interviewed in Sweden, which included social workers, professionals working for statutory authorities, hostels, shelters and foster homes and psychologists.

‘I am a social worker. I work in the “Hub” which provides drug-assisted therapy. It is for women who have a long or at least one year documented heroin addiction. They receive their medication and talk with the nurses but we as social workers provide psychosocial treatment.’

‘We have women from age of anything from 20 to 50+. Thirty women currently use our service – this is our capacity.’

‘I’m employed as a social worker. Main role is outreach work on the street with prostitutes, mostly women or almost exclusively with women. Two nights a week I’m out on the street so I’m working half night and half day. And during the day I meet women in prostitution and I have treatment for such women. You see therefore women prostituting themselves.’

‘We are working with the homeless, abused women, everything relating to adults. We receive applications in relation to homeless women and try to find some sort of temporary housing for them. My role is I receive applications.’

Knowledge

As we said earlier, within this first of our three themes, we asked service providers about the characteristics of their service users; training that they had received specifically in relation to women rough sleepers or their experiences of violence; knowledge of the extent of the problem of women rough sleepers; the services available and any gaps they could identify in services; and their knowledge of legislation, policies and professional guidelines.

Knowledge: characteristics of UK women rough sleepers

The service providers interviewed in this sample said that they had not worked with any women who had children with them – they had usually given them up already into care or foster care. Their clients presented with problems of substance, alcohol abuse, relationship breakdown; mental health problems and were suspicious of authority or ‘officialdom’.

‘Typically very well groomed, very tidy… which is probably how they keep it hidden – that’s a pride thing undoubtedly. But yeah I would say drug and alcohol and with that probably mental health issues as well.’

‘It’s possible that young women particularly when it’s very cold deliberately get arrested (for shop lifting) so that they can get into the [police] cells because it would be a roof over their head so they’ve instigated the criminal activity in order to survive.

‘There are all classes, all levels of education, all levels of intelligence, addiction, non-addiction and it’s the same for the women as it is for the men.’

‘We’ve got quite a high proportion of young people that have been looked after so around 20 per cent to 23 per cent have had some experience of the care system. Similarly around young people and [the] criminal justice system.’

‘The women that we come across they tend to have multiple support needs which would be possibly mental health, drug and alcohol dependency and being excluded from many services, thus they are now sleeping rough on the streets.’

Knowledge: characteristics of Hungarian women rough sleepers

The service providers interviewed in this sample reported that all the women they saw were very different. Some had college degrees and others only elementary education, some could be helped, others not. They described them as chaotic, unable to follow rules, mistrustful, victims of abuse, fearful, having problems with alcohol, and mental health issues, hard to reach, lonely and not aware who can help them.

‘Some women have been coming here for 10 years; they have lost all hope of ever changing their lives. Many do not trust homeless or other services. Some women come to us with only a bag of their belongings, fleeing an abusive husband that they had reported to the police several times, with no avail. They have lost hope that anyone would help, so they rather choose to become homeless.’

‘They do have problems with keepi...