‘You’re having us on … that’s what it felt like.’: Frontline Workers Navigating the Introduction of Moral Commitments to Domestic Abuse Support within a Statutory Homelessness System

Abstract

That domestic abuse is a human rights infringement has become recognised at policy, practice, and legislative level globally. Homelessness services are critical in averting and mitigating harm to those who have experienced domestic abuse. The British homelessness system achieves this, in part, through offering a legal right to housing in some circumstances. The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 integrates a human-rights based understanding of domestic abuse yet reduces legal rights to assistance. Based on analysis of interviews with fifty-two homelessness workers and twenty-four applicants I argue that moral commitments cannot compensate for legal rights; rather, they deresponsibilise homelessness services for addressing domestic abuse. I show (1) that workers saw cases where homelessness arose from domestic abuse as functionally beyond the remit of homelessness services (2) that empowered women were understood as undeserving by the system and (3) that workers saw domestic abuse cases as a broad and undefined threat to resources.