2nd opinion: We're not out of danger yet

Domestic violence can only be combated if you have a true multi-agency approach." So says Barbara Roche, minister for social exclusion. She also says the government is committed to tackling domestic violence: it has allocated £7m for developing refuges and a consultation paper for a new bill is due this spring.

This is all good news to those of us who have worked in the refuge service. However, the principles on which those services were built are absent from Supporting People, the new funding regime for care services that came into force on Tuesday.

The Supporting People framework could herald the development of strategic, multi-agency responses to domestic violence. But by its very nature, it could also restrict the range of services provided by refuges.

The refuge service started as a voluntary activist-based provision, set up by organisations such as Women's Aid and focused on self-help and empowerment.

In the past decade, however, services to families escaping violence have changed considerably. Working with Anja Ahmed, a professor from the University of Salford, I undertook a study to look at how and why this had happened. We surveyed women living in refuges, staff working in refuges and experts from Women's Aid and government.

Our research, Charting the Change: From Rhetoric to Reality, was completed last May. It found that the changes are due mainly to increased state involvement and funding. Services today are more professionalised, based on business principles, service standards and key performance indicators.

Supporting People brings an even greater degree of state control over services. State provision needs to be accountable, so it is subject to government performance indicators. Capital used in refuge development will be linked to housing-based solutions, so performance will be monitored on the quality of housing services provided.

For refuges to receive Supporting People cash, the support provided must be related to housing. It will not fund other forms of support, such as counselling when families have left the refuge.

But housing is only a part of what should be a comprehensive package of services. What about self help and empowerment? They help what has been called "consciousness raising". Dr Catherine Mackinnon, a lawyer and academic, describes consciousness raising as the way in which women identify with each other to recognise how power is used against them to perpetuate violence.

Consciousness raising, it has been argued, is the key to helping women overcome domestic violence. However, although Women's Aid was involved in devising Supporting People, there was no reference to such thinking. So it is unlikely that the support it provides will be underpinned by an ethos that encourages women to help themselves.

The overall aim of government policy is to encourage greater competition and choice through privatised services and business incentives. Funding of support services will not, and should not, all be provided by the state.

All agencies involved in providing support to victims of domestic violence need to acknowledge and recognise their specialisms and work together to provide a spectrum of necessary services. Without this, it is likely that services will be limited to housing-based support. This is the reality behind the rhetoric.