Women’s charity gets more calls for help due to cost-of-living crisis

Women’s Aid says it has noticed an increase in contacts to its helpline from women concerned about economic abuse in the face of the current cost-of-living crisis.

The organisation, which supports women and children experiencing domestic violence, said it expected to see a 17 per cent rise in calls to its 24-hour helpline in the new year as women “deal with the aftermath” of the Christmas period.

Figures provided to The Irish Times show there were 2,608 contacts made to its national freephone helpline in November 2021, which rose to 2,862 the following month and 3,344 calls in January of this year.

[ Gardaí responding to domestic violence reports ‘every 10 minutes’ ]

It expects to receive 92 calls a day over Christmas, and predicts this will jump to 108 calls a day in the new year.

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Linda Smith, helpline manager with Women’s Aid, said January was “always a busy month” for the organisation and was generally “a direct result of what people experienced in December and over Christmas”.

“Women will often contact us in January when Christmas is over, when the kids are back to school and they have the space to reach out for support, whether they’ve contacted us before or not,” she said.

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Abusive environment

“From our perspective, Christmas is a very challenging time for women and children who are living in an abusive environment… What we’re experiencing more now is concerns women have around economic abuse. This may include a partner withholding maintenance if they’re separated, and women struggling financially.

“It has been coming up more recently and I suspect it will continue. Things like there also may have been restrictions on the use of power in the house, with the heating and so on – they mightn’t be allowed to put the heating on.

“So some women and their children will probably be spending Christmas in the cold.”

Ms Smith added that Women’s Aid didn’t expect to see a “spike in calls” on Christmas Day itself as “women work hard to keep the peace”.

“It is the one day that there is not a huge volume of contacts,” she said. “Very often in abusive situations if the perpetrator or the abuser wants to inflict further abuses they will, so it’s really out of the woman’s control, but they will do absolutely everything they can to comply with whatever will minimise the abuse up to Christmas because they want the children to have some sort of a normal Christmas if that’s possible in an environment where abuse lies.”

Women’s Aid 24-hour national freephone helpline (1800 341 900) will operate on Christmas Day and across the festive period.