ABSTRACT
For nearly 30 years, Women’s Aid services across the UK have provided both practical and emotional support to women and children experiencing violence and other abuse from those with whom they are living. Women’s Aid grew out of the women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s: the ‘great mobilisation of women’ described by Rebecca and Russell Dobash (1992). The first Women’s Aid groups were set up in response to women’s desperate need for a place to stay with their children, where their violent partners could not find them. In the early years, there were very few options available. Protection under civil or family law was almost impossible to get (except in the context of divorce); domestic violence was not accepted as a reason for homelessness; the police dismissed ‘domestics’ as a trivial and time-wasting use of their resources; and the response of most agencies was ‘go back home and make it up’.
