2020 – Silent Solutions service set up

Whilst working to move our services online during the pandemic and continue to safely deliver our refuge services, we became aware of the exponential increase in domestic abuse across the country.  Calls to the national helpline were increasing but calls to ours were decreasing significantly, while incidents of domestic abuse increased by 13% in Northamptonshire.  We thought that this increase could be due to women being unable to call local services because they were in lockdown with their perpetrator.  So, we set up our ‘Silent Solutions’ helpline, a mobile phone number that could accept text messages and an email address.  We put out extensive publicity to alert the public about the new service and the phone number and within hours we had our first message from a woman who could not speak with us but could send short emails.