Baroness Hussein-Ece
Main Page: Baroness Hussein-Ece (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Hussein-Ece's debates with the Home Office
(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
My Lords, since 2014, MHCLG has invested £80 million in accommodation-based services, including refuges, to support victims of domestic abuse. There were 3,898 bed spaces in refuges in England in 2018. That is a 12%increase from 2010, but additional Covid funding has reopened, creating up to 1,546 additional refuge bed spaces and enabling a further 344 bed spaces that were closed due to Covid-19 to reopen. As announced in the other place during the passage of the Domestic Abuse Bill, which I hope will be in your Lordships’ House soon, we will provide £1.5 million to fund the Support for Migrant Victims scheme, which is due to be launched this autumn.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD) [V]
In its report, Safe and Well: Mental Health and Domestic Abuse, Safelives states:
“Despite the strong association, domestic abuse often goes undetected within mental health services and domestic abuse services are not always equipped to support mental health problems.”
According to this organisation, there has been limited progress by government agencies and
“NHS leaders to drive integration of domestic abuse into the health sector”.
This is particularly true of mental health services; it is often
“prolonging the period in which victims have no support”.
Will the Government undertake to provide more targeted resources than those already mentioned by the Minister so that more is done to ensure greater awareness of the relationship between domestic abuse and mental health within all organisations? This will help people to get the support they need faster.
Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)
You cannot decouple domestic abuse from mental health trauma. Surely the two go hand in hand, not only for the woman—it is usually a women—who is suffering abuse at the hands of an abusive partner but also, usually, for her children, who feel those effects and the trauma for a very long time, if not the rest of their lives.