Saving Weymouth Women's Refuge - why Government needs to support the 'Big Society'.

When I was Parliamentary Candidate in South Dorset in 2010, I began, with a small group of others, a campaign to prevent the closure of Weymouth Women’s Refuge.

We failed to prevent the closure but last week we won a 2 year battle to reopen the Refuge.

I’m writing about this because I think it’s illustrative of how we need more support in moving towards service provision which combines public, private and third sector partnership. More and more services will be threatened by reduced availability of funding as we move into an ageing society.. This is not about ideological withdrawal of funding – it’s simply the effect of our demographic time bomb. Unless we raise taxes, with fewer people of working age and a longer lived older population, the taxes of workers will no longer cover the care of those no longer able to earn.

We can see how this pans out in the battle at the moment over public sector pensions – which the Blair government tried to reform & bottled. It’s also raising its ugly head in the domain of adult social care.

So how does a civilised society provide the same level of care for the vulnerable where there are insufficient resources at the centre ? And to be clear, if you over tax the workers, the impact on growth in the economy is as damaging in other ways as fueling that growth by public sector expansion was in the Brown years.

So the refuge is a case in point. The community wanted it , desperately, to remain. Not just for iconic reasons, but because many of them had used it, knew people who had used it, and were aware of the damage done by domestic violence in destroying lives.

Collecting signatures for our petition & forming a fundraising group (Friends of Weymouth Women’s Refuge) we met many, many women who had been direct victims of DV – a far higher proportion than you would imagine. But we were told again & again & again by officials, ”You will never be able to save it”.

Anyone who knows me, will know that I rarely take no for an answer.

Aware of how we had managed in BLAST ( a training and skills social enterprise of which I am a co-director in Bridport) to create partnerships that cumulatively were able to piece together in jigsaw format services usually provided by a single body, we set out to construct such a partnership – and my colleagues, Gill Taylor & Mary Watson, set out to investigate a variety of delivery models.

The model we have ended with involves Magna Housing buying and maintaining the building; Raglan Housing providing the staffing in liaison with the Dorchester Women’s Refuge; the Friends providing funding (charitably raised ) for delivery of the Freedom Programme ( training for survivors of DV & their families to enable recovery and prevent repeat experiences) and some financial support from the Borough & District Councils.

As with all partnership models it took years to construct, and a lot of convincing of public officials needed to be done. We needed to change the function of the refuge so that it would provide ‘move on’ accommodation from the Dorchester Refuge – a clear and different need which still increases the number of places available. Now we need to develop the charitable arm of the Friends into a fully fledged fundraising operation. The refurbished refuge will open next year.

Although partnershipworking is hard , it can foster resiliance. When one plank of the model collapses, the others can step in and offer a safety net. Will the service be as good ? I don’t know. What I do know is that Government needs to make such partnership working easier, and that where it is community led, needs to be prepared to support development whether through short term investment or advice.

Since the 1940s we have come to expect the provision of all our needs by the state. That is a model that clearly needs adapting. But the problem with policy in the current Government is the expectation that something will just ‘come in’ to fill the gap. And if you are providing a service it’s not acceptable for that to be a profit led provider – there has to be a community/ philanthropic element involved. How can government help to revive this ? I think that’s a huge task – and one no-one appears to have thought to address.

It won’t be easy – and I think it will rely on evidence based practice from those of us on the ground and recognition that where we ask for help that help is needed. We have been too defeatist in this country and too reliant on the state as provider for this kind of partnership to come about easily. The so-called ‘Big Society’ is not just going to happen. Reopening the Weymouth refuge has been a victory hard won !