It’s been very difficult for our clients and their families since the racist riots earlier this month, and we are deeply concerned that the subsequent impact and increased risk of racist abuse on the street is much worse than is being covered in the media or acknowledged more widely. Some of our staff, clients and their families have been racially abused when they have been on their own or with their children. Women feel unsafe and unwelcome and are afraid to travel very far. Clients have been telling us that things feel worse than lockdown and they are too afraid to take their children to the park which is making the summer holidays very difficult. We have had to cancel all our in-person activities and events for summer and have switched to provide specialist support groups online.

These families are already dealing with trauma and ongoing mental health issues especially anxiety and depression. The impact of the racist, Islamophobic riots have meant that women are staying at home in conditions that are poor and overcrowded, mainly in temporary accommodation, refuges, hostels or hotels. Staying at home during the summer holidays with their children means they are not getting enough exercise or fresh air and are feeling the impact on their mental health for themselves and their children. We don’t know if women are being prevented from leaving their perpetrators due to the riots, but we expect this will deter women from leaving, especially as fears over immigration status are already used by perpetrators to blackmail women into staying. For now, we also don’t know how many women have returned to the perpetrator as a result, but we expect this is likely to happen.

There is a clear concern that women who were already fearful of leaving their partner because of their immigration status are going to be even more fearful and less likely to leave. It is very common for perpetrators to use the fear of deportation as a tool to maintain control and now this is likely to happen even more. We are worried that women will see the UK as hostile and unwelcome and become even more fearful of all statutory services. It is also possible that many who have already left will return to the perpetrator because they are even more afraid of being on their own and facing abuse on the street. This is the experience of all our South Asian clients, and Muslim women are fearful of dealing with Islamophobia on the street or having their hijab forcibly removed.

Our staff have been really impacted experiencing verbal racist abuse and Islamophobia. The week after the riots everyone was fearful about going to the office or using public transport and we noticed that the streets in local areas were much quieter. However, both staff and clients are also determined not to have their lives impacted by racists and want to return to more of a sense of normality but to be balanced about it and to take each step in their own time. We are expecting that dealing with the impact of the riots and rising hate crime will incur extra costs for us and are aware that these costs may change over time.

We are still learning about what is needed but, more widely, communities need to be reassured that they are safe, and that Local Authorities want to consult with them and come up with clear plans that give us confidence that people can feel safe, especially regarding hate crime. Locally we haven’t seen much of a police presence that would help clients to feel more secure, but many communities are already wary about contact with the police and statutory services in general. At national government level clients and staff were encouraged to see that rioters were being arrested quickly and sentenced. However, we have not been asked by Local Authorities or statutory services how our community is doing. There is a concern for us that wider society feels like this is over now and everything can go back to normal because the protests on 7th August were met with anti-racist protests, but this is not going away because communities are afraid, and we need to know that there are plans to seriously address what has happened and how to prevent it happening again.

To prevent future impact, we need:

• Flexible funding for by-and-for domestic abuse services like ours and others to support women to safely leave abusive relationships, build support networks through their journey of healing and recovery and meet the evolving needs of clients and staff.
• Evidence of improvements in the Metropolitan Police. Communities need to restore faith in the police, but this must be demonstrated by evidence of significant improvements.
• Local Authorities and other statutory agencies to actively engage with communities to fully understand the impact of these riots and what they can do to help people feel safer.
• Radical plans for community cohesion. This area has been woefully overlooked for many years, and it has been up to grassroots organisations to build their own networks and support across different communities. Investment needs to be made across the UK to tackle the root causes of offending behaviours ranging from anti-social behaviour to domestic terror.