Women’s Aid Groups: The Economic Case for State Assistance to Battered Wives

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Abstract
This paper asks two broad questions: (1) Why is that in a country with such a broadly based welfare state as ours there is so little provision for battered wives? and, (2) What resources should be devoted to assisting this group? These questions are discussed respectively in sections 2 and 3. In this section we start by describing what little assistance there has been up to now for battered wives. The pioneer group in the field was Chiswick Women’s Aid (henceforth CWA), and it is worthwhile briefly to outline their activities. The primary function of CWA is to give assistance to battered wives and their children, as described by Pizzey The basic structure is that of a wheel, with spokes leading out from the hub to points on the rim. The hub is the so-called Crisis Refuge in Chiswick which accepts mothers and their children on a twenty-four hour, open-door basis. That is to say, mothers can arrive an any time of the day or night and will never be turned away. The Crisis Refuge, as its name implies, deals more with short-run cases than with long-run chronic situations though in this context short-run may mean several months.

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