Chichester homeless charity calls for more support for rough sleeping women
It's as a new report warns they're "falling through the cracks"
Last updated 3rd Jul 2025
A Chichester homeless charity's calling for more support for women who're sleeping rough - as a report warns they're "falling through the cracks."
Stats released today show there's ten times more females sleeping rough than the Government counts.
The national census, by Solace and Single Homeless Project alongside Crisis and Change Grow Live, conducted across 88 local authorities, uses more thorough and accurate ways to count women sleeping rough - methods that better reflect the true scale and realities of how women experience rough sleeping across England, such as the near-universal experiences of domestic abuse and VAWG (violence against women and girls).
Hilary Bartle, Chief Executive of Stonepillow, said women are in a unique position:
"Some of the issues aren't dissimilar from men who are in that same position, but the risk of a woman being out on the street is absolutely massive.
"That risk of rape, abuse, violence, intimidation, bullying, coercion, harassment day in, day out, and that vulnerability is absolutely great.
"So we have to be mindful of that huge risk that is presents to those women over and above what may their male peers may may suffer."
Single-gender services "critical"
The charity has it's own female-only therapeutic project, to address women's differing needs.
Hilary continued:
"Often women won't move into hostels because they're mixed gender and they don't feel safe.
"They resist moving into their emergency accommodation if they are placed by local government because they don't feel safe.
"It's predominantly men, so the where their options are very limited and we need to really address what the options are for women with or without their children.
"That recognition of single gender services is critical because women will not come into them if they don't feel safe, and so therefore there isn't that provision for women to move through.
"So I would really champion the fact that we need to look at gender specific services to enable women to feel they have that ability to step off the street, to step out the car, to step away from the abusive relationships into something safer, more therapeutic, that will look at them and deal with them as a whole."