Tampon Tax Community Fund (360G-cabinetoffice-GA-199632)

These women may have become very isolated as a result of their abuse. Domestic abuse can include:trapping women in their own home and preventing them from leaving; stopping them from working; giving them no access to money and stopping women from seeing family and friends. Added to this habit of being isolated, they have fled their home and are in a refuge and they may not feel safe if they go out. Many of these women have no opportunity to meet and talk to other women. We will evaluate by asking women what their situation is at the start of attending the groups and how they feel emotionally and how confident they feel. We will compare this to how they self report after attending a number of group sessions. We expect them to feel more confident and to feel more in control of their lives. in practical terms we would expect them to go out more and have more contact with new friends from the group or with people they already knew. We expect that by sharing their experience they will feel more empowered and will realise that other women are experiencing similar trauma and this will reduce their feelings of guilt and stigma.