As part of our Spotlight on domestic abuse and mental health, Brandy speaks to Jane and Natalie from Shared Lives who, together with SafeLives are piloting an innovative which involves survivors of domestic abuse living with a Shared Lives carer

Collette, Kathryn and Shakti, who all work in the domestic abuse sector, share their experiences of mental health problems, as well as discussing childhood experiences of domestic abuse.

Maria speaks to Chief Inspector Julie Fry, of Hampshire Constabulary, about the police response to LGBT people experiencing domestic abuse

In this podcast, Collette speaks to Berkely Wild, founder and director of The Diversity Trust – a community interest company that aims to influence social change to create a fairer and safer society. Berkeley talks about how The Diversity Trust collaborated with Bristol based Next Link domestic abuse service in a year long project to improve access to domestic abuse services in the West of England for LGBT communities, and touches upon how his own lived experience of domestic abuse has made the issue important to him.

Read a transcript: https://tinyurl.com/ycybfcb5

Penny met with Tara Stone, the founder and director of Be – a trans community support, development and campaigning organisation. We talked about how to ensure services and organisations are inclusive of gender diverse people, and the additional barriers faced by gender diverse people who may be experiencing abuse.

Read a transcript: https://tinyurl.com/y932jose

Collette meets with Leanne from Stonewall Housing, who explains how traditional housing options for victims of domestic abuse may be difficult for LGBT Plus people to access and how, in some cases, they may leave that person at risk of further abuse.

Read the transcript: https://tinyurl.com/yc86sjrv

SafeLives Insights data indicates that bisexual women are particularly vulnerable when experiencing domestic abuse, especially in terms of mental health. Ruth and Collette from SafeLives sat down to discuss their experiences as bisexual women, and the difficulties that bi women face when accessing domestic abuse services.

Rise runs a specialist LGBT refuge project offering temporary accommodation, outreach and resettlement support to medium and high risk LGBT survivors of domestic abuse. Evelyn has worked as an LGBT specialist Idva and here talks about some of the potential barriers faced by lesbian and bisexual women and highlights good practice points for Idva services to adopt.

Read a transcript: https://tinyurl.com/y8jdvev3

Justin Varney, National Lead for Adult Health and Wellbeing and co-author of a new report that explores, amongst other issues, talks about how domestic abuse is a serious and under-researched health issue for L,B, & T women and other women who have sex with women.

Read a transcript: https://tinyurl.com/ybuzp2wy

Collette speaks to Millie and Iain from Galop, about the needs of their clients, and how they manage safety planning and risk

Read a transcript: https://tinyurl.com/yd2jm42p