Gender and Trauma Informed Responses to Women’s Homelessness

This section of our website is dedicated to learning from a recent project at AVA. The Haringey Women’s Voices Project was a partnership project between AVA, Solace, IMECE and Haringey Council and funded by Homeless Link. The project was focused on improving gender and trauma informed responses to women with experiences of domestic abuse and homelessness through peer research, peer support and training.

This project was formed of four key parts:

At AVA we believe women’s voices are at the heart of gender and trauma informed practice, and giving women agency and choice over the way they are supported is the key to appropriate responses to those with experiences of domestic abuse and homelessness. This project worked to raise the voices of women with these experiences, and this learning hub provides key resources to support others to do the same.

Resources

Click on the hyperlinks below to access resources, reading and materials from this project.

Peer Research

As part of this project we undertook peer research with women in Haringey with experiences of homelessness/insecure housing and domestic abuse. In this section you will have access to:

• A paper on women’s experiences of homelessness and domestic abuse.
• A webinar hosted by AVA and a peer researcher on co-production and best practice when bringing survivors into research.

Peer Support

The other key aspect of this project was providing peer support to women with experiences of domestic abuse and homelessness/insecure housing. In this section you will have access to:

• A creative booklet entitled ‘My Voice Matters: Finding Our Voices Through Peer Support’.
• A co-designed leaflet/poster presenting 6 key principles of trauma-informed peer support.
• A webinar hosted by AVA and peer facilitators on co-production and best practice when running peer support in the community.

Training and Development

Best practice when supporting women with experiences of domestic abuse and homelessness demands adopting a gender and trauma informed lens to all support or research endeavours. In this section you will have access to:

• A resource padlet for professionals looking to embed gender and trauma informed responses in services.
• A list of recommendations  for Local Authorities aiming to embed a trauma and gender informed response to women with experiences of domestic abuse and homelessness.