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Stafford Women's Aid was formed in the 1970s when a number of women’s liberation groups began to campaign against domestic violence. This period saw a huge growth in awareness of the struggle that thousands of women & children were facing in their own homes because of violence and abuse from their male partners. It was felt that abused women and children needed a totally safe place to stay where they would find help and support in making decisions about their futures.
A small women’s group in Stafford decided to lobby the council for a property to use as a safe refuge. The Council’s Housing Committee argued that they couldn’t consider such a thing unless statistics were provided to prove that a refuge was needed .So in 1975 the women's group carried out a survey of domestic violence in Stafford, contacting hospitals, doctor’s surgeries, Social Services, Police, the Samaritans, and so on. The results of the research proved overwhelmingly that many women and children in the area needed a safe house to escape violence. As a result, and with the help of sympathetic councillors, we were eventually offered a council flat and we opened as a refuge in 1976. Our first refuge was a tiny two-bedroomed fire damaged flat above a butcher’s shop. It had no garden but a small yard with butcher’s bins full of offal! Nevertheless, we were full within the first week of opening, and Staffordshire Women's Aid was formed.
Over thirty years on we have grown a great deal, and offer a range of different services across Stafford Borough, Staffordshire Moorlands, Chase District and South Staffordshire including refuge and community outreach. We also provide training to other agencies, run a programme of educational and preventative work with schools in Staffordshire, and we are involved in national and international research partnerships. We remain, however, a grass roots organisation, led by the views of the women and children we work with.
Strongly linked to the feminist movement of the 1970’s, women’s groups began to set up refuges across the UK and Europe. Women’s Aid Federation of England (WAFE) developed as an umbrella body for many of these refuges, providing a national identity and a common set of aims and principles to take the movement forward. Staffordshire Women's Aid has been a fully affiliated member of WAFE since its beginnings, has been involved in regional networking and development, and the current Chief Executive is a member of WAFE’s Board of Trustees, having regular contact with National Office in Bristol.
Staffordshire Women's Aid remains proud of its affiliation to WAFE, which works to combat domestic violence at a national level, is often consulted on government research and initiatives, provides guidelines and resources for bench-marking and good practice, and produces key research on domestic violence at national and global levels.
Membership of WAFE also means that Staffordshire Women's Aid is networked to nearly every refuge in the UK, enabling us to refer families who need refuge or support out of the Staffordshire area where needed.
Staffordshire Women's Aid works with National Women’s Aid’s definition and approach to domestic violence:
“Domestic violence is physical, psychological, sexual or financial violence that takes place within an intimate or family-type relationship and forms a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour. Crime statistics and research both show that domestic violence is gender specific - usually the perpetrator of a pattern of repeated assaults is a man. Women experience the most serious physical and repeated assaults. Any woman can experience domestic violence regardless of race, ethnic or religious group, class, sexuality, disability or lifestyle”.
Domestic violence is a violation of women and children's human rights, that it is the result of an abuse of power and control, and that it is rooted in the historical status of women in the family and in society.
Women and children have a right to live their lives free from all forms of violence and abuse, and that society has a duty to recognise and defend this right.
Copyright 2009 © Staffordshire Women's Aid
Registered Charity Number: 505728
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