By Keziah Cracknell
Kirklees Council recently said that cases of domestic abuse may actually increase due to the pressures of staying at home during the Coronavirus pandemic.
For someone who is in an abusive relationship or household, it may be very difficult to ‘stay at home’, as has been suggested.
If you or a person you know is experiencing abuse, what can you do? Thankfully, while it can seem like an impossible task in the current climate, here are 24-hour helplines that can offer help, support, and safe accommodation to those who need it.
Domestic abuse is not just exclusive to one gender, ethnicity or age.
MPs have called for a ‘cross-governmental COVID-19 strategy on domestic abuse’, which shows how seriously they are taking this potential rise in cases.
However, it can be argued that more should have been done regardless and that it shouldn’t take a pandemic to start taking domestic abuse more seriously.
The Home Affairs Committee has said that calls to abuse helplines have increased by 49% compared to before the pandemic.
The committee has warned of the long-term consequences of not dealing with this rise and leaving adults and children in an abusive relationship, which could affect their very lives.
Yvette Cooper, the chair of the committee has said that while staying at home saves lives in regards to COVID-19, “for some people home is not safe.”
This must be something that everyone is aware of, for ourselves, also for our vulnerable neighbors, family, or friends that may be experiencing abuse under lockdown.
Kirklees Council said: ‘speak out to reduce domestic abuse’. COVID-19 might take lives, but so does domestic abuse.