The importance of partnerships

Somehow (how?!?) its half way through week two of the transatlantic exchange, and I have abruptly realised that I've only got a few days left. How time flies!  That means two things, firstly that I must stock up on all the Reeses Pieces and Cheetos that I can realistically fit into a suitcase, and secondly, that I need to drag my attention back to my research questions and find out more about partnerships, as this is a key aspect of providing a Housing First service to vulnerable clients. It has made me think about which partnerships in particular are key when working with women; obviously mental health is one, as we know that chronically homeless women are more likely to have a diagnosed mental health condition than men. In that regard, the Downtown Women’s Centre have amazing mental and physical health services in their on site health centre, which includes a psychologist on staff, counselling and an impressive array of trauma groups and workshops. I’m going to come back to this in a later blog, as there is another key piece of innovative partnership working that Downtown are involved in at the moment, around homelessness and domestic violence.

Representatives from housing and homelessness, domestic violence services and the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority (LAHSA) have formed the Domestic Violence Services Coalition to tackle the huge systems gap that exists between the two sectors.  Sixty five percent of the women that come through the doors of the Downtown Women’s Centre have a domestic violence history or are experiencing on-going domestic violence. The coalition aims to change systems to better enable domestic violence survivors to avoid homelessness in the first place, therefore preventing chronic homelessness overall. The group is focusing on four different areas; mapping systems and looking at where the disconnects are, training, education and sharing knowledge and expertise, funding, and lived experience. The general focus is on the intersections between homelessness and domestic violence, and to tackle the silo approach where the woman can access support through the homelessness system OR the domestic violence system, but nothing in between.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to sit in on a coalition meeting, and was inspired by some of the points made by Anne Miskey, the CEO of Downtown Women’s Centre. Anne talked about how there was no one ‘model’ survivor and that as well as making sure service provision is trauma informed, we need to think about safety, and how that can mean very different things to different women. She talked about the need for a continuum of housing services that meet the needs of women, wherever she is at at that specific time, whether that is at immediate risk of being killed by her abusive partner, or a woman who fled DV several months back who just needs a house and a job, AND all the positions in between. She also made a crucial point, one that I want to focus on when looking at women and housing first, around those survivors that do not want to leave their perpetrators, or who go back to the situation, asking key questions around how we can provide safety in this setting.

Seeing partnerships like this, that are having these crucial conversations around risk and safety, around what is working and what is not, has been really inspiring. We are starting to have these conversations in the UK, but feel there is much to be learned from the coalition style approach taken by domestic violence and housing and homelessness organisations in LA.