Writer: Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs OBE, Founder and CEO, Surviving Financial Abuse
Throughout 16 Days of Activism we’ve invited different organisations to make clear how they’re combatting gender-based violence and home abuse. Be part of us as we be taught, discover methods, share tales and advocate for a future that ensures all victims are supported.
For a lot too lengthy financial abuse has been left within the shadows. However this has solely allowed abusers to perpetrate this devastating type of abuse undetected and unaccountable.
That’s why I arrange the charity Surviving Financial Abuse in 2017. I needed to place a highlight on financial abuse to boost consciousness of it so it extra individuals can spot the indicators and get assist. However I additionally needed to ensure extra perpetrators are stopped of their tracks so we will put a cease to financial abuse without end.
Financial abuse is a devastating type of coercive and controlling behaviour that includes the management of a associate or ex-partner’s cash, funds, or the issues cash should purchase.
It could embody harm to your property, stopping you from getting or maintaining a job, forcing you to construct up money owed, refusing to contribute to family prices or, after separation, refusing to pay baby upkeep or break up joint property. It usually leaves victim-survivors homeless, in debt with a poor credit standing, and with no job or prospects.
Our new analysis reveals that 1 in 5 ladies within the UK skilled financial abuse within the final 12 months alone. That’s equal to five.5 million individuals.
It’s no surprise financial abuse victim-survivors usually really feel trapped with a harmful abuser, placing them liable to additional hurt, or that it’s not possible to rebuild their monetary independence and stability once they flee. This could even drive some victim-survivors to return to an abuser or take their very own lives.
And it’s scarily prevalent. Our new analysis reveals that 1 in 5 ladies within the UK skilled financial abuse within the final 12 months alone. That’s equal to five.5 million individuals.
Worryingly, regardless of the long-lasting and damaging affect of this type of abuse, one in three ladies didn’t attain out to anybody for recommendation or assist after being subjected to this type of management.
We all know from our work with victim-survivors of financial abuse that banks and constructing societies play an unparalleled function in supporting their prospects to take again financial management.
Via our work with banks, we’ve seen unimaginable dedication, innovation and funding in responding to the wants of victim-survivors. Via our partnership with Lloyds Banking Group, we now have collectively developed a mannequin of greatest apply response to financial abuse in monetary providers – a specialist Home and Monetary Abuse crew, which is specifically skilled and keen about guaranteeing prospects obtain the very best response.
We’ve additionally suggested TSB on their flee fund, which supplies emergency funds of as much as £500 for patrons to depart an abuser. This fund has helped victim-survivors and their kids entry cash for necessities, like meals and journey, after fleeing with nothing however the garments on their backs.
One victim-survivor advised us that she visited her native HSBC department after seeing the advert on the tube. She used the department’s Secure Area to entry assist and developed a plan to flee. She is now starting to really feel secure in her own residence once more.
And eventually, HSBC UK’s marketing campaign, ‘When an abuser controls your funds, they management you,’ with UK Says No Extra, raised consciousness of financial abuse and our work. Reaching hundreds of thousands of individuals, this highly effective nationwide promoting marketing campaign modified lives. One victim-survivor advised us that she visited her native HSBC department after seeing the advert on the tube. She used the department’s Secure Area to entry assist and developed a plan to flee. She is now starting to really feel secure in her own residence once more.
We all know from our work with victim-survivors that not each survivor finds the precise individual to talk to at her financial institution the primary time round. Provided that victim-survivors coerced into debt have on common 5 totally different collectors (in accordance with knowledge from the Monetary Help Line run by our frontline associate Cash Recommendation Plus), it’s no surprise that many really feel like they’re going round in circles and having to retell their story many times.
We would like all financial victim-survivors to know they aren’t alone and there’s assist on the market for them.
That’s why, to coincide with Financial Abuse Consciousness Day, we launched a brand new Banking Help Listing which is a web-based one-stop store setting out how your financial institution may also help so survivors can rapidly and simply entry the assist they want.
We would like all financial victim-survivors to know they aren’t alone and there’s assist on the market for them.
In case you are fearful you could be experiencing financial abuse or a member of the family or pal could be, go to the Surviving Financial Abuse web site for additional info on accessing assist: https://survivingeconomicabuse.org/i-need-help/
Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs OBE has labored within the violence in opposition to ladies and ladies sector since 2006 in each policy-influencing and analysis roles. She is an professional in financial abuse because it happens throughout the context of coercive management, and arrange the charity Surviving Financial Abuse in 2017.
This weblog was written in a private capability and might not replicate the view of the organisation.
