Following our AGM on Saturday 5th December, Women’s Aid Federation NI has published its Annual Report 2014-15.

It has been a highly successful year, in spite of the difficulties and challenges that WAFNI has faced in this era of budget cuts and funding reductions. In 2014-15, Women’s Aid continued to provide vital support to women and their children suffering domestic abuse in Northern Ireland, and our 24 Hour Domestic & Sexual Violence Helpline supported thousands of women and men affected by domestic and sexual violence.

You can read the full report of our work this year in our Annual Report. In the meantime, here are some headline statistics of our work in 2014-15.

Between 1st April 2014 – 31st March 2015:

  • 932 women and 689 children stayed in refuges
  • 439 women unable to access refuge in their area due to lack of bed spaces
  • 71 women were supported in refuge during pregnancy
  • 13 babies were born to women in refuge
  • 195 BME women stayed in refuge
  • 241 women in refuge presented with mental health issues
  • 3,567 women accessed Floating Support and 4,186 children were indirectly supported through the Floating Support service
  • 2,395 women accessed other Women’s Aid outreach services

During this year, the PSNI recorded the following statistics on crime with a domestic motivation and sexual crime:

  • 28,287 incidents with a domestic motivation were reported to the PSNI.
  • The PSNI responded to a domestic incident every 19 minutes of every day.
  • 13,426 domestic abuse crimes were reported, this represents approximately 13% of the overall crime in Northern Ireland (105,072).
  • The total number of all recorded offences of murder was 16. Those classified as having a domestic abuse motivation totalled 6. Therefore, 37.5% of all murders in Northern Ireland in 2014/15 had a domestic abuse motivation.
  • There were over two and a half times as many domestic abuse crimes (13,426) as drug offences (5,048).
  • There were more domestic abuse crimes (13,426) than burglary offences (8,937).
  • There were 2,734 sexual offences recorded including 737 offences of rape.
  • Since January 2010 (cumulative until 31 March 2015) 8,363 MARAC (Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conference) cases have been discussed of which there were 10,856 children living in the household. In 7,955 of these cases the victims were female.

All PSNI / MARAC data is taken from the following reports:

  1. Trends in Domestic Abuse Incidents and Crimes Recorded by the Police in Northern Ireland 2004/05 to 2014/15: Annual Bulletin published 06 August 2015 PSNI Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.
  2. Trends in Police Recorded Crime in Northern Ireland 1998/99 to 2014/15: Annual Bulletin published 06 August 2015. PSNI Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency.
  3. PSNI MARAC Steering Group Update – March 2015
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