A piece on the BBC. It’s always heartening to learn of the closure of domestic abuse charities which cater only for women.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
I would like to raise some points against the article from the BBC, for which I think they have failed to raise in light of this closeure.
As much as I don’t like much needed services for men or women to be closed down, I do think that the charity are either failing/refusing to see the bigger picture here, instead focusing on what appears to be their own personal agenda.
Chair Marilyn Gregory said it felt like the charity would be letting down women who needed its services.
She said: “It is so disheartening to find ourselves with no prospect of sustaining our services, it feels like we are letting down those women who have no alternatives.”
There are a plethora of services nationwide for women, lead successfully by womens aid, so how quite women are being let down doesn’t appear to be the case. One could be cynical about this and think this is really about someone losing their position( usually well paid) in the organisation over funding. Shouldn’t we all be protesting in the lack of DV support services to ALL those who need them ?
Speaking at the time, Angela Argenzio, chair of the council’s adult health and social care policy committee, said the authority could not directly fund the charity.
The part above in bold( repeated in the BBC article) emphasised what the issue maybe, in that govt funding of any kind is not supposed to discriminate against one with protected characteristics( and yes I know there are legal loopholes that politicans have given themselves and their lobbyists). I would suspect that the charity is discriminating against men( since the whole article is their emphasis on gender)…
Vida claimed it saved the NHS about £50,000 per month.
i would doubt that and add that refusal( in any shape or form) to support victims of DV would add to the cost for the NHS, the legal system, the police and the familes( including children) of those who are not treated( because of gender based denial). we ALL know about the high risk of sucide of men when they are constanly let down.
“We know that other services addressing mental health receive direct funding but Vida does not.”
again I’m going to point to the paragraph above by pointing out the likely reason why mental health receives direct funding, again because they don’t discriminate on protected characteristics. Its possible that some of that mental health funding goes towards those who are denied DV support services( denial based on gender can do some serious harm) by “charities” like yourselves.
To summerise.
Organistations like VIDA need to come into the 21st century and focus on people not their protected characteristics. To stop projecting their own issues onto recieptants of Domestic Abuse/Violence.
You can either choose enable Domestic Violence by focusing on your own bias or you can choose to greatly reduce it by choosing to focus on the act and not the gender…
Organistations like VIDA( and the BBC) need to be let go so that society can get on with the job of healing ALL the victims
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Thanks Rob, interesting – but Women’s Aid, Refuge etc. disciminate on grounds of gender.
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