Dr. Stephanie Holt:

One of the central and critical aspects of the service when we think about homelessness and domestic violence is that the solution is not just about housing, it is about integrating safety and risk and supporting women and children where they are at, if where they are at is in their own communities, or supporting them to move on afterwards. A number of the women who participated in the research highlighted that they would never enter a refuge with their child or children. Some of those reasons might have been because the child had a disability or because they themselves had a disability and, as such, they were linked into a whole range of services within their own area. Leaving their own area to go into a refuge would mean they would be compromising that network which was really holding the family together. By being offered a safe home in their home, the child could continue to go to school and the family could continue to engage with the services that are essential for normal functioning. The intense nature of the service was particularly highlighted in that women had support five days a week, Monday to Friday, from the visiting woman support worker and the child also got one on one support. The basis for that was an assessment of need and risk in order that a robust and informed safety plan could be put into place for those women and children to support them to move on.

To return to an earlier question asked by Deputy Coppinger about the risk of injury and death and how that is linked to homelessness, if we only look at that six-month period, regardless of homelessness, one has an extremely vulnerable population. Children experiencing domestic violence are one of the most distressed groups in the population of children in this country and further afield so they are already very distressed in a very vulnerable and at-risk situation.

When homelessness is added in, it just elevates that risk and increases what is already an established risk of serious or lethal assault. There is research evidence, some of which is in Ireland and more limited evidence abroad, of a clear link between serious and lethal assault involving women and children being murdered in that six-month period. When one adds in the crisis of homelessness, one just shoots up that elevator of risk.