Women have, without any shadow of a doubt, been among the hardest hit casualties of austerity. So no one will be shocked that they will be hit again as the chancellor beats his cuts drum for the latest budget. But for all the multiple and outrageous ways in which women have borne the brunt of austerity, nowhere is the impact more acute than in the area of protection from domestic and other kinds of violence.

All over the country women and girls fleeing abuse have watched as legal aid cuts denied them access to justice (now, thankfully, challenged by the courts [1]). They have endured the loss or scaling back of vital local services they rely on for support and refuge.

Meanwhile research has shown that, since 2010, there has been a rise in violent crimes perpetrated against women [2], a trend that runs contrary to declines in other types of violent crime and that directly coincides with the timeframe of austerity cuts affecting domestic violence services.

No wonder then that women from Sisters Uncut were protesting outside the Treasury on Monday to highlight the issue and declaring austerity an attack on women’s rights [3].

This latest demonstration is just one of many efforts by women’s groups to counteract threats to services across the UK, including, in recent months, attempts by black and minority ethnic (BME) organisations to shine a light on the precarious state of specialist BME violence against women and girls services.

In the lead-up to the government’s updated strategy to end violence against women and girls published last week [4], fresh calls were made for ringfenced cash from central government to protect local BME provision, with groups warning that as local funding becomes harder to get, the risk of services disappearing is growing.

The government has introduced a catalogue of initiatives [5] to address abuse, extra funding [6], the updated strategy – timed to dovetail with International Women’s Day – and policies to tackle female genital mutilation (FGM) [7]. But BME-specific groups are stressing that the picture at a local level is growing worse by the month.

Organisations such as Imkaan [8], an umbrella group that works to address the abuse of BME women and girls locally, nationally and internationally, along with Southall Black Sisters in London have been arguing for protected funding for the (usually small) dedicated specialist services that cater for vulnerable clients from BME backgrounds. Women running, working in and using this kind of provision say that without a separate pool of money allocated centrally, many of the 34 services operating in the UK could face closure in the next few years.

Recent analysis by Imkaan [9] of specialist local BME services revealed that more than two-thirds (67%) “felt uncertain about their sustainability in the current climate”. A large part of this was down to what the organisations referred to as an unequal playing field, where commissioning leant toward larger, generic providers, as well as the fact that decreasing resources put greater pressure on local authority funding streams.

To add to the pressure, local BME specialist services reported that high demand meant they were increasingly forced to seek out sources of revenue beyond local councils.

While there are of course mainstream domestic violence organisations that include provision for BME women, Marai Larasi of Imkaan stresses that specialist services exist for a reason. Run by and for women from BME backgrounds and with a wealth of expertise in issues such as, for example, FGM, they are often the only service many vulnerable women feel comfortable approaching.

“The commissioning decisions can be about economies of scale but in many instances there is a lack of understanding about why specialist services are important,” Larasi says.

Having a place to turn, where women escaping abuse feel understood “and where they have a voice” is critical, she adds.

Violence against women and girls is so pervasive and destructive that we simply can’t afford to lose any of the (already overstretched) services in existence, including those that offer specialist services to BME women and girls. Ring-fencing some funding is no panacea, but it could at least help save longstanding organisations essential to the people who matter most – the victims.

Mary O’Hara