50 Simon Communities in Ireland “It’s very much individual, you know, the women will have high needs and then they will go through a period of very low needs. So it’s about adapting to that all the time and that works really, really well in terms of prevention and preventing people from falling through the cracks and going back into homeless services.” Important also was a perceived need for housing and service options for homeless women that reflect the heterogeneity of this population, particularly in relation to their differing support needs and housing preferences. “It’s more individual support and care planning. I mean every journey is very different … everybody’s needs are so very, very different, you know? What’s right for one woman could be completely wrong for the next, you know ...” Overall, the data suggest that service providers perceived significant deficiencies in the current system of service provision for homeless women. Indeed, several stated that they felt that the specific needs of women have been largely overlooked within policy and by the service sector as a whole: “It’s very hard to get away from it, from the feeling that it is something we need; gender- specific policy and services. I think we, it seems like the sector and policies have all shied away from it in a big way”. Deficiences in the provision of female-only services and services that are sensitised to the specific needs of women – particularly those who have experienced violence and/or are separated from their children – were also repeatedly highlighted. “We need dedicated services for women, you know, so the staff understand, the trauma. The child separation thing is massive for women, the trauma of losing their child and the guilt and the pain of all that. And a lot of women we work with would have been assaulted and sexually assaulted. I just think we need really specialist services to deal with that.” A lack of provision and awareness of specific subgroups with complex needs, such as sex workers, women escaping domestic violence and women with histories of incarceration, was also referred to regularly by participating service providers. “We services are ill-equipped to deal with women who are prostituting … I know lots of places are struggling to deal with situations when they’ve got clients who are involved in the sex industry it’s like, ‘What do we do? How do we do it?’ You know, it’s very difficult and, again, I think it’s something we need to get more knowledge on and learn from each other about the practical side.” Practitioners frequently stressed that deficits within the service system in relation to the provision of gender-sensitive programmes and supports can result in women avoiding services that they feel are ill-equipped to respond to their situations: “We see less women coming in to homeless services whether that’s because there are less homeless women or whether because the services aren’t right for them, I don’t know”. As highlighted earlier in this report, gender-based violence features prominently in the life stories of women who experience homelessness. A large number of service providers demonstrated an awareness that many homeless women may have histories of violence and abuse and several talked at length about the negative and long-lasting impact that these experiences can have on women’s mental health and wellbeing. Thus, when considering how to improve services, many practitioners considered it vital to bear in mind that women with traumatic experiences often present in a highly vulnerable state. However, the question of how
Women, Homelessness and Service Provision
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