Everything about getting help is harder in a language you are not comfortable in, and the difficulty is systematically underestimated by people who have never had to do it. You can describe an ordinary day in a second language…
There is a consistent, slightly uncomfortable finding in this work: a woman who arrives alone is treated differently from a woman who arrives with somebody. The complaint is taken more seriously. The questions are less dismissive. The file moves…
A great many women dial the number, listen to it ring, and put the phone down. Sometimes for months. The reasons are consistent: not knowing what to say, not being sure it is bad enough, being afraid of what…
Women arrive at shelters with an idea formed from films and leave within days because it was nothing like it. Others avoid them entirely because they imagine something much worse than the reality. This is a plain description of…
Where you sleep tonight is a different problem from where you live next year. Confusing the two is why some women refuse a perfectly good short term option, and why others accept a bad long term one because it…
Most Nigerian websites on this subject carry a long list of hotlines. A large proportion of those numbers do not answer, and some have not answered for years. A dead number is worse than no number, because it is…
Two things drive this article. Some treatment only works if you get it quickly, and a medical record made at the time is the strongest evidence that exists in this whole subject. You can act on the first without…
Every piece of advice about getting help assumes a private moment. Call this number. Send a message. Have a look at this website. A great many women have none of that. The phone is his, or is checked. There…
Most organisations do not write this page, because it is not a good look. We think the absence of it is worse. People arrive at a service at the worst point of their lives, and the least useful thing…
HealBridge runs six programmes. They exist because these are the six things that decide whether leaving lasts, and because a woman who receives only one of them very often goes back. That is the whole design principle. A shelter…
