Skye Derrington, our service manager for East Sussex safe accommodation services, takes us behind the scenes to demystify life in a refuge. 

There’s a lot of secrecy and uncertainty about what life in a refuge might be like. What are the rooms like? Can I leave when I want? So let me walk you through what happens. 

Arriving at a refuge

When someone is accepted into refuge we will work with them to move them in as quickly and as safely as possible. We always try and make sure their rooms are all made up to a really nice standard so that they feel homely when they come inside. We recognise how traumatic it is, leaving majority of your belongings behind, with many having to leave their current living situations quite quickly due to safety reasons. 

 

We have a variety of types of accommodation available currently and are expanding this where we can. This includes shared accommodation which is single-sex which is a private bedroom for a single woman or women with up to three children. There are shared kitchen, living areas, bathroom facilities and gardens. Additionally, we currently have a self-contained unit with 9 flats for single women and women with up to 5 children. We are also due to open new self-contained units which will be all gender inclusive with priority for male and trans survivors. Within this we have a fully wheelchair accessible flat for a single woman and a ground-floor adapted flat for a woman and 1 child. 

 

When a person arrives, they meet their key worker, we introduce them to other residents and then we start designing a support plan with them for the whole of their stay, focussing on their short-term and long-term goals. 

 

We try to make all the rooms really homely, just little touches, even if it’s just making sure they have things like bedside lamps, fresh bedding on, towels – so that they can kind of come in and have a shower straight away if they need to. 

 

There are some rules in refuge, but they are designed to make everyone feel safe in the accommodation. It is not intended to further control people or anything like that. We do review the rules regularly and we take feedback from residents around any changes we might need to make.  

 

Most people are with us for 6-9 months. Some people are with us for longer and some for shorter periods of time. It all just depends on their own personal circumstances.  

 

Regardless of how long the stay is, what people need to know is that refuge is designed to be a safe and homely space for people to heal and recover and to not be scared of it, because what you are doing to get to refuge is obviously already so terrifying. Our biggest goal is that once you get to refuge you feel like that you can take a breath of relief and have some space for yourself.

Day-to-day living 

 

Day-to-day life in refuge really varies but generally you will have a keywork session booked in every week but you will probably see your keyworker a few more times a week than that just to have little check ins here and there. We try and make people’s lives as free as possible. You can go out all day as much as you want, you can stay away up to 3 nights a week – just let your keyworker know. We try to let movement be quite free between people so that you still have that element and control over your life.  

 

We also run activities within refuge so they might range from something as simple as just a coffee morning and a quick chat with people to something a bit more formal like a workshop on self esteem or healthy relationships.  

 

We like to do a lot of arts and crafts kind of therapy because that works quite well for adults and children. There’s a lot of socialising with other residents. We often find, groups of mums will build strong relationships, their children will be going to the same schools, they will help each other with the school runs, cook dinners together, so that all happens kind of naturally.  

 

For people that don’t want to socialise as much they’re free to go to their room and chill, they don’t have to be involved in those things.  

Helping people 

 

Helping people can be really difficult at times, because I think you can have a very clear vision in your head of how someone needs to be helped and what will get them to their end goal – but that doesn’t mean that that person is ready to be helped in that way.  

 

For example, when someone moves to refuge the expectation is that they’ve stopped that relationship with the abusive partner they’ve fled from. That doesn’t mean that all their feelings stop or they’re able to stop contact completely in the way that the refuge rules might say they need to. It can be really challenging getting that person to the point of fully separating away from the perpetrator in the abusive relationship and often they’ve had more than one abusive relationship.  

 

On the flip side, it’s really rewarding to see the small changes in someone as they develop from the beginning of their time in refuge to the end. I have had clients that have come into refuge and they barely talk to you, they won’t look you in the eye, they will hide away in their room, they will be stuttering when they talk. They can’t do anything like make a phone call themselves or anything like that.  

 

Towards the end of refuge, when they’ve been allocated a property and they are moving on, it’s so good to see their progress. I might try and offer to help in some way, but they will say “no I’ve called them, I’ve done this, I’ve done that” and it’s always just amazing to step back and go “wow – 6 months ago you couldn’t even make a phone call without being really distressed about it and now you’ve just been able to do that yourself.”  

 

It’s those little wins that are the most powerful thing to me because they’re what really show how that person has changed over time and it’s good to reflect on these throughout the persons journey. That’s the joy in helping people. 

Changing lives  

 

Some clients have said some really powerful things about how we’ve completely changed their lives. A few of them will say “I wouldn’t be here without you guys” and they’re meaning being in this world, in this life, because they would’ve died in some form or another. That’s just the most powerful thing, the fact that we’ve been able to help someone stay in this life and have a new life, it always really hits hard and reminds you of why you do the job.  

 

We do this day-to-day and sometimes you forget how important what we do is because we are just dealing with it all the time. When you get feedback like that – it’s just really amazing and makes me really happy. 

Advice on working or volunteering in a refuge 

 

Working in refuges is a very challenging but very rewarding job. You encounter such a variety of different types of people who have had different life experiences.  

 

People from very low income, low education backgrounds to people with high income, high education backgrounds – everyone can be impacted in the same way from domestic abuse. 

 

I’ve been doing this job a few years now and I’m still learning things every day and I really enjoy it. I would encourage anyone thinking about working or volunteering in refuge to give it a go.  

 

It is really just about working with people and trying to make their lives better in some way. Even someone being able to volunteer by having a 5-minute chat with someone to give them the space to be listened to might feel like nothing to you but could feel like everything to that survivor of domestic abuse. Little things you do can make a massive difference to someone’s life.  

 

If you are interested in volunteering in a refuge, get in touch: volunteering@interventionsalliance.co.uk