• HealBridge

Every organisation in this field rations, and almost none of them publish how. That silence is not neutral: it means the reasoning is never examined, and a woman who is turned down is left to conclude she was not believed.

So this is our rationing, written down. It is uncomfortable to publish and we would rather be criticised for the criteria than not have any.

What comes first, always

Immediate danger to life. If somebody may be seriously hurt tonight, that goes to the front, and everything else waits.

The markers we weigh most heavily are the ones this whole field agrees on: pressure on the neck, threats to kill, a weapon, violence during pregnancy, threats of suicide alongside separation, and violence towards children. Escalation matters more than severity at a single point — incidents getting closer together tells us more than one bad night.

Children at risk of serious harm. Same category, and the one place we may act without permission.

Anything with a deadline that cannot be moved. A court date, a medical window after an assault, a school place that closes on Friday, a child about to be taken out of reach. These get priority not because they are the worst but because a week’s delay destroys the outcome entirely, and there is no way to recover it later.

What we weigh after that

• Whether we are the only option. Somebody with a family who can house her is in a different position from somebody with nobody, even where the danger is comparable.
• Whether a small amount now prevents a large problem later. A term of school fees, a deposit, transport for three weeks. This is the most cost-effective category we have and it is easy to under-prioritise because nothing is on fire.
• Whether it is time-limited or open-ended. A defined need is easier to take on honestly than an indefinite one, and we would rather say that plainly than promise indefinite support we cannot sustain.
• Whether the rest of the plan holds. Housing without income fails in three months. Where funding one part only delays the collapse, we would rather fund a smaller number of women properly — that is the argument in why the money is weighted towards work and housing.
• How long somebody has been waiting. Not decisive, and it is a real factor, because a queue that is purely need-ranked never reaches the steady cases at all.

What we refuse to weigh

This list matters more than the one above.

• Whether she is leaving. Women who are staying get the same access. Most of the people we work with are staying.
• Whether she went back. Returning is a stage in the process. It does not move anybody down a list and it does not close a file.
• Whether she reported it. Not reporting is usually rational.
• Whether there is evidence. We are not a court and we are not assessing whether it was bad enough.
• How she presents. Calm is not evidence of exaggeration, and distress is not evidence of severity. Both are unreliable and we try not to read either.
• Religion, ethnicity, state of origin, marital status, age, disability, or whether she has children.
• Whether her case would make a good story. We do not publish them at all, which removes the incentive entirely. Why that rule exists is set out in full.
• Whether a funder would find it appealing. Nobody’s money buys a place in a queue, and a donor who asks who their money helped is told no.

How the decision is actually made

The person who takes the first call does not decide alone. Anything involving accommodation, money above a small threshold, or a refusal is looked at by more than one person, and urgent cases are decided the same day rather than waiting for a meeting.

Decisions are recorded with the reason, briefly. That is partly so we can be held to this, and partly because a pattern of refusals is worth looking at — if we are consistently turning down the same kind of case, that is usually a gap in what we do rather than a run of correctly identified non-priorities.

What happens if you are not first

You are told, and you are told what we can do in the meantime, which is usually more than nothing: legal advice, documents held, help with a safety plan, a conversation. Those are not rationed in the same way because they cost us very little.

You are given a realistic timescale rather than an encouraging one, and if we do not know, we say so.

And you can come back. Circumstances change, and something that was not urgent in March can be urgent in June. Tell us if it has, because we will not know otherwise.

If you think the decision is wrong

Say so, and ask us to look again.

It goes to somebody other than the person who made it. Tell us what we have misunderstood, because the most common reason we get this wrong is a first description that turned out to be a fraction of the situation — a woman who mentions in the ninth minute that he held her by the throat last month has a different case entirely, and it is our job to ask rather than hers to lead with the worst thing.

We would rather be told we were wrong than have somebody quietly conclude they were not believed.

The part we are not comfortable with

Rationing means somebody who needed help did not get it, or got it late. That is not a problem this page solves and it is not one we can honestly write our way out of.

What we can do is be transparent about the criteria, keep the service small enough to do what it says, and publish what was spent so that the trade-offs are visible. The accounts and the limits are both published for that reason.

If you have been turned down and you are reading this, we are sorry. What we still do in that situation is written down, and asking again later is not an imposition.

Questions people ask

If you need help now

If you are in immediate danger, call 112. To talk to HealBridge, email us at hello@healbridge.org, or use the form on our contact page. Every page on this site has a Quick Exit button at the top right, and pressing the letter E three times does the same thing.