BAME women’s charity responds to increasing demand from domestic abuse victims, thanks to National Lottery COVID-19 funding

• Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre has been awarded nearly £80,000 in National Lottery funding to support vulnerable women and their children at-risk of or victims of domestic abuse
• The London-based charity, offers welfare advocacy, and employment services to women and children from BAME and migrant communities
• The charity has seen a doubling of calls, including three times as many high-risk cases since COVID-19 lockdown began

Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre, a women’s charity that focuses on providing domestic abuse and welfare support to vulnerable women and children from BAME communities in and around Camden, has been awarded nearly £80,000 of National Lottery funding.

The money from The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK, will help them respond to the current increase in high-risk domestic abuse cases caused by lockdown restrictions, offering immediate support as well as making plans for the long term. Hopscotch which has been running for 20 years, was initially set up to support women and children from Bangladeshi and migrant communities, but has since widened its reach to Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and runs a centre in Camden.

The charity’s vital work includes arranging refuge, offering legal advice through volunteer solicitors, and support through their welfare and pre-employment services. These services are especially essential to migrant women who often have no recourse to public funds. Over the past few months, Hopscotch has reached out to those in the local community who may be at risk, offering one-to-one and group sessions online and workshops focusing on positive well-being.

At the centre, services are offered in 18 languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Wollof, Pathwari, Cileti, Bengali, Mandink, Bangla, Gujarati, Pashto and Farsi, alongside culturally specific support.

One woman’s experience, who is receiving support from Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre^[i]: A mother and her three very young children were thrown out onto the street early one morning in April. They were followed by black bags of their few possessions.

A kindly neighbour took them in and suggested they call Hopscotch. Our lines were busy in the morning, so a call was made to Camden Safety Net, who put the mother in direct contact with one of our Domestic Violence advocates – they themselves couldn’t help the survivor because of the language barrier.

With nowhere to go and the survivor feeling unsure about reaching out to her own family, our Hopscotch advocate made a third-party report to the police explaining the physical abuse that had taken place, the vulnerability of the children and their homeless status. This family were lucky. Though all refuges were full, they were allocated a space in a bed and breakfast within the borough – this doesn’t always happen. Word was already out that the husband was searching for the mother and children around the borough, and risk levels were rising.

However, once in a safe place, our advocate made contact with our volunteer solicitors who started the process of a non-molestation order to ensure the family’s safety. What our advocate has now done, and what Hopscotch are well known for doing, is to put measures in place to be there for this mother in the long term.

Benaifer Bhandari, CEO at Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre, says: “In Camden there has been a 60% increase in calls for domestic abuse, but women are still not coming forward to protect themselves and their children. This means at Hopscotch we are seeing high risk cases because women are hiding away for too long - possibly because of enforced isolation. It’s tragic and we have worked hard to prepare for a larger rate of disclosure in the coming weeks and months, as we’re already seeing a rise in the volume of disclosures and this will continue as London opens up.

“Thanks to National Lottery funding, we can continue to support women and families across Camden, at a time when our services are needed the most. We are now able to keep running as a charity through these tough times because of help towards essential salaries - which help us to be there for every BAME woman who needs our front-line services.”

Helen Bushell, Head of Funding for the South of England at The National Lottery Community Fund, said: “The National Lottery is playing a critical role in supporting people, projects and communities during these challenging times. Groups such as Hopscotch Asian Women’s Centre are making an amazing contribution to the community-level response. We’re incredibly grateful for their dedication and the hard work of thousands of projects across the UK – we’re humbled by their efforts and delighted that our funding is able to help.”

Camden isn’t alone in receiving National Lottery funding – London has awarded over £3.8 million since the beginning of June, which is being distributed across 109 community projects and organisations.

Across all of the National Lottery distributors, £600 million has been made available to support communities throughout the UK during the coronavirus outbreak. Thanks to National Lottery players, £30 million is raised every week for the UK’s good causes, and £41 billion has been distributed to 565,000 good causes across the UK since 1994.

^[i]Full Case Study from HAWC:

April 2020

A mother and her three very young children were thrown out onto the street early one morning in April. They were followed by black bags of their few possessions.

A kindly neighbour took them in and suggested they call Hopscotch. Our lines were busy in the morning, so a call was made to Camden Safety Net, who put the mother in direct contact with one of our Domestic Violence advocates – they themselves couldn’t help the survivor because of the language barrier.

With nowhere to go and the survivor feeling unsure about reaching out to her own family, our advocate made a 3rd party report to the police explaining the physical abuse that had taken place, the vulnerability of the children and their homeless status. Police officers picked up the family and took them to the police station where they spent the day, whilst our advocate worked with Camden Safety Net arranging temporary accommodation.

This family were lucky. Though all refuges were full, they were allocated a space in a bed and breakfast within the borough – this doesn’t always happen. Word was already out that the husband was searching for the mother and children around the borough, and risk levels were rising.

However, once in a safe place, our advocate made contact with our volunteer solicitors who started the process of a non-molestation order to ensure the family’s safety. With such a high-risk case, this family have been advised to not have too much phone contact with extended family and friends and therefore are alone with only the support of our advocate.

What our advocate has now done, what Hopscotch are well known for doing, is to put measures in place to be there for this mother in the long term. So far, the survivor’s trauma has been suppressed because of the focus on practicalities.

Over the following weeks, as her other support stepped back, our advocate remained the person there to help the survivor identify the pieces she has been reduced to. Hopscotch’s welfare and pre-employment services have joined in to help pick up those pieces and find her inner strength to be able to identify her own goals.

We will be there to help her clearly see her options and offer her a path forwards, away from abuse, away from just surviving and towards the full life every citizen deserves to live.