The police will attend as soon as possible after a 999 call. The phone operator will advise you what to do until the police arrive.

When the police arrive on scene they will deal with the emergency i.e. remove the suspect from the address if they are still there and assess the situation. Once things have calmed down they will look to take a statement from you, assess the risk to you and look at immediate safety i.e. do you need a new lock etc. Taking details to assess the situation may take time. 

You should be told that the Domestic Abuse Team will be in contact soon, probably the next day. When they get in touch, you should be allocated an officer who will deal with your case, including telling you if the suspect has been bailed, charged and if so, when they are attending court. They should tell you what is happening throughout the case and ask what you want and need to happen around safety i.e. if going to court, they will talk to you about restraining orders etc. 

If you call the police and live in Leeds, one of our workers is often in the control room. They can call you to offer support after the police have done the initial assessment of the incident. In the long term, our IDVAs can also support you throughout a case going through the criminal justice system. You can find out more about their support here.

Our helpline is open 24 hours a day and a trained helpline support worker is always ready to listen and offer support in whatever way they can. If you just want to talk to us about your situation, we are here to listen. We can also refer you into our service, give you more info on how we can help or signpost you to other services if needed. 

We will ask you at the start of the call for your consent to keep your details and details of our conversation on our database. You don’t need to share anything you don’t want to and can stay anonymous if you would prefer.

Click here for more on what a call to our helpline is like. 

Emails sent to our [email protected] address should be answered within 24 hours, except on a weekend, when they will be answered as soon as we can in the next few working days. 

Our response will depend on what you have emailed us about. If you have given brief details, you will be invited to give us a call to go into more detail. If your contact details were given, then we may ask when would be a safe time to call you. If you have given a lot of detail, we will then give some options available to you but you will always be invited to speak to someone on the helpline if you would like to.

If violence and/or abuse happened earlier and/or is not an emergency, you can call 101 to report the incident. In these cases the operator will take more details and advise when a police officer will be in contact or could make an appointment for you to go to the main police station in Leeds to make a statement. However, if you want help right now, please never worry about wasting police time. 

You can also call or email us to get support with the situation.

Our group support and drop-in services are open only to women, including trans women.

We can support people of all genders in our emergency accommodation either through our refuges (women-only), or our dispersed independent properties. We also support families with children of all genders and ages in our safe accommodation, ranging from refuges to dispersed accommodation, depending on individual circumstances.

Sometimes our refuge and dispersed property spaces won’t be available due to space but we will always support you if we are able to and work hard to offer suitable alternatives to you if we are at full capacity.

We have interpreters available for people who speak all languages, through the translation companies Language Line and Big Word. Some of our staff also already speak different languages, as well as English, that may be common in Leeds communities.

We have British Sign Language interpreters available for any clients who are deaf or have hearing impairments. We will make any adjustments we can to make our support work for you.

Yes, we can. We have 2 spaces in our refuges and 1 dispersed property suitable for people with mobility needs. We also have 1 refuge space for someone with full-time care needs. We will always do our very best to keep these places available and prioritised for people with physical disabilities or care needs.

If we cannot support you , we will do our very best to help you access support from another service that can help.

Clients in our refuges often have a range of diverse backgrounds, identities and experiences. We work hard to ensure that everyone is well catered for, can access to the foods they want and can celebrate all religious and cultural events. We often have big celebrations for Diwali, Eid and Christmas and Easter, as well as other festivals.

We aim to have a diverse team of staff in our refuges and the rest of our service to ensure people from a range of backgrounds and experiences are represented. We also have specialist workers to support people from Gypsy and Traveller communities and people with experiences of forced marriage, honour-based violence, trafficking and modern slavery.

We also welcome people with children and young people of all genders in our emergency accommodation and have a specialist team of Children and Young People workers.

We can work with people with “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) and people with unsettled migration statuses through all of our services.

We do not have a limit on how many people with NRPF we can support at our refuges but because this is dependent on getting funding, it means we are sadly not always able to support everyone who comes to us.

If you currently have no recourse to public funds, please do get in touch with us and we will do our very best to support you. We will talk you through the process we will go through to try to support you. If we are not able to support you in this instance, we will do our best to help you find other services that can offer support.

We are well-trained and equipped to work with people with mental health needs. We also completely understand that domestic abuse and violence can have severe impacts on the mental health of victims-survivors. 

We work with all our clients with a trauma-informed, non-judgemental, person-centred approach, taking into account their needs and listening to what they want. We can also support you to access appropriate mental health services to make sure you get specific support for mental health, including drug and alcohol use services, therapy and counselling services and more.