Southwark Women’s Centres struggle to survive due to inadequate government funding

A report published this month (October 6) by Women In Prison, a national charity that supports women affected by the criminal justice system, has found that around half of Women’s Centres’ in England and Wales are facing a funding crisis.

Women’s centres across the nation provide a variety of in-house resources to vulnerable women and children, from food bank facilities to counselling. However, due to insufficient government funding many of these centres are finding it increasingly hard to offer services to those who desperately need them.

This lack of funding is impacting some communities more than others. In the Southwark borough many centres are particularly struggling to provide their users with safe housing due to the ongoing local housing crisis.

Southwark based charity Southwark and Lewisham Women’s Service, are struggling with relocating their users out of dangerous domestic situations. Chris Price, the CEO of the women’s service who specialise in helping those affected by the criminal justice system, stressed that sourcing housing is their top priority. He said: “We need to make sure these people have their housing. And that it is safe housing. Every woman we work with has either been a victim of crime or a victim of domestic abuse and if that’s the case you cannot release them into a community where they’ll be at risk again.”

Prevention resources many women’s centres offer, such as community-based fitness classes and career coaching sessions, are now having to be de-prioritised due to inadequate budgets. Sarah Hicks, Deputy CEO of The Bridge, an independently run women’s day centre located in Borough said: “We’re trying to provide support but that is so hard to do at the moment as there’s not enough resources to go around. It's harder to get funding for the early stages, to get support to people before they get to a critical point.” She went on to add: “It’s really tough, it definitely has been for a while but it’s really stretched now.”

On discussing the funding disparity with Southwark Borough councillor Irina Von Wiese, she said: “We now have to divert so much money to food and support programmes that all these other things have fallen by the wayside, which is extremely sad.”

National economic crises such as the increasing cost of living and soaring energy bills mean that government funding is no longer stretching far enough to support charities like women’s centres. Councillor Von Wiese said: “The problem of course is that we now have to scrap so many of our programmes simply because we have to keep people alive.”