FAQs

If you are a professional looking for advice or support, please check these questions in the first instance before contacting us as you may find answers to your questions.

We support women and children in Birmingham and Solihull, but we are able to signpost to more local services where appropriate and can still offer support and advice to an extend if you are out of our borough. To find a service close to you you can search here.

BSWA is a charity that provides practical and emotional support to women and children who are experiencing violence and abuse from someone intimately connected to them. We have a number of different projects such as refuges, a helpline, a webchat, MARAC IDVAs and many more!

Each Women’s Aid organisation covers a different geographical area. We offer different services but often work together to deliver services regionally and to move women to safe refuge in other boroughs. We also work closely with www.womensaid.org.uk. Although we may share many core values and principles, we have our own policies and procedures and our own way of working with the women and children in Birmingham & Solihull.

We generally encourage women to contact us themselves for safety reasons and also so that they can do this when the time is right for them. In the vast majority of cases, this method is the most appropriate method of supporting the woman, but you are welcome to call us and talk through the specific circumstances for advice.

Unfortunately this is not possible, as BSWA is a self-referral service. It is important that women access us when they are ready to, and want support from us in their own right. However as a professional, you are welcome to call our Helpline to get some support in relation to the woman you are working with e.g. to find out the options available to her, to get some guidance on safety planning etc.

BSWA provides support to women experiencing abuse and violence from someone intimately connected to them. This means someone who they are currently in a relationship with / have previously had a relationship with or a family member. Unfortunately we are unable to support women experiencing problems from someone they know, but have no intimate connection to. Women in these situations should contact the police, council or specialist housing services such as Shelter for further support.

Absolutely! We support women at any and every stage. If she feels that she would like to speak to us, then we want to be there for her. We understand that leaving is a process and that for some of the women who use our services, leaving isn’t the appropriate option for them at that time. We will work at her pace and we never tell women what to do.

Refuges are emergency accommodation, so it’s not possible to reserve spaces so far in advance. If on the day the woman is ready to leave, there is no refuge space available, she will still be able to access emergency accommodation through the council, so will not be left with nowhere safe to go.

Our Helpline is open every day of the week between 9.15 and 5.15 and our webchat is open from Monday to Friday between 10 and 4.

No, if women wish to remain anonymous then they do not have to provide personal details if they do not want to.

Requests for information about our service users must be made in writing from a professional e-mail account. The e-mail should include the woman’s full name, her date of birth, the reason why you are seeking the information and evidence that the woman has given you consent to make this request. E-mails should be sent to central@bswaid.org.

Yes! We offer a range of training courses aimed at professionals. You can find out more on our training page.

Whilst we can certainly check that she has been placed onto the correct band, unfortunately due to the national housing crisis, it is taking much longer than usual to get permanent properties. If the woman has been placed in temporary accommodation by Birmingham City council you may want to speak to the TA team to see if she can be moved to more appropriate accommodation whilst she waits. The Birmingham team can be contacted on 0121 303 7410. For Solihull 0121 717 1515.

When women leave messages on our Helpline, we always make two attempts to call her back. It may be worth sharing with the woman that we may call from withheld numbers (or it may appear as an 020 number) and for safety reasons, we do not leave messages. If her phone won’t take a call from a withheld number, we can arrange an alternative. If she would like us to leave a message saying we have tried to call, she must make that explicit in her voicemail.

Our Helpline is extremely busy and unfortunately we cannot answer every call that comes through. We do understand that it can be hard for women, but please encourage her to leave a message and we will always call her back. Please remember to remind her that we call back from withheld numbers and for safety reasons, we do not leave messages unless we have been explicitly told by her it is safe to do so.

Unfortunately we do not have a counselling project, but we can offer emotional support to all the women who access us. We can also signpost her to specialist counselling services that support women and children affected by violence and abuse.