Inside a Women's Shelter: It Could Happen to Any of Us

Friends, some interviews really get under my skin, and this is one of them. Our reader Saskia runs a support center for women in crisis. Her work brings her face to face with heartbreaking, brutal stories, and she says: “Abuse and hardship cut across every social class. It could happen to any one of us!” Thank you for this wonderful conversation, dear Saskia, and THANK YOU for the work you do!

Dear Saskia, you work at a center for women in crisis. Who can come to you for help, and what does that help look like?

We serve women only. Our center has four different areas where women can find support: a counseling center, an emergency overnight shelter, a residential home with four satellite group homes, and supported living in women's own apartments.

The counseling center helps women who are at risk of losing their housing, who have lost it, or who are living on the street. We help them communicate with government agencies and fill out applications. In our conversations, we work out together what other support each woman needs, and we walk her through the handoff to the right services.

We also step in between women and their landlords when needed. We help with applying for a legal guardian, too. Beyond that, we give broad advice on finding housing and on securing a financial footing. Women without a permanent address can also set up a mailing address with us.

Can you explain the different areas in more detail?

The emergency overnight shelter is attached to the counseling center. It has two beds, which we can stretch to three in an absolute emergency. Women who need a place to sleep on short notice can stay safely for three nights. They can shower, do laundry, and cook for themselves.

We keep a small supply of emergency food, paid for through donations. So if a woman arrives with nothing, she can get a hot meal when she needs one. Many women are in truly desperate situations and have little more than the clothes on their backs. In those cases, our clothing closet can help.

Stays in the emergency shelter are limited to three nights a month so that we can keep short-term beds available. During that time, the counseling center helps with finding somewhere to go next, such as an emergency shelter in another city, a room in a boarding house, or a spot in our residential program.

In our residential program, women live either in the main home or in one of our four satellite group homes. Shortly after a woman moves in, we work with her on a support plan with up to ten goals. Together we define what she wants to achieve and the steps it will take to get there. That plan is the basis for everything we do together. It's reviewed every six months and submitted to the funding agency.

A primary caseworker then supports the woman as she works toward the goals they've agreed on. The funding agency generally plans for a stay of two years, but it can be extended if needed.

In the residential program, we work on things like financial instability, debt, mental or physical health struggles, and legal or family problems. The woman herself always decides how fast to go and how deep to dig into her issues. We help her set priorities, which a lot of women find hard.

We often see how much pressure society puts on these women. Many want to get back to work as quickly as possible because it's what's “expected.” When that happens, we first take a calm look at where she is in her life right now and prioritize her goals from there.

It matters to me to say this: a woman who is under enormous strain, who regularly breaks down emotionally, or who can barely function because of trauma should not be rushed into a job interview. In those situations, the first job is to create stability and take care of her health and safety. At the same time, we send the message that it's okay to focus on yourself first, and that your worth isn't tied to having a job.

Are there “typical” stories behind the women who come to you?

I started this job more than eleven years ago, and I had very clear ideas about the kind of women I'd meet in a “homeless shelter.” I couldn't have been more wrong.

The women's backgrounds are incredibly varied. In our center, you meet all kinds of life stories. Of our current residents, two have university degrees: one studied journalism, the other sociology and psychology. Another woman can't read or write. Our youngest resident is 19, our oldest is 74. The women we serve reflect the whole range of society.

But what many of the women I've met over the years have in common is childhood abuse, either physical or sexual. As adults, that often leads to toxic relationships, and it not infrequently ends in homelessness.

Women who were abused or sexually abused as children often come to feel that it's normal to be treated badly, talked down to, or devalued. I often work with women who lived in relationships where they were kept extremely “small.” They were homemakers and moms. They raised the kids and ran the household. Then at some point the partner wants out and puts her out on the street. His name is the only one on the lease, so she has to leave, and she has no legal claim to the apartment.

If the couple wasn't married, she often has no claim to financial support from him at all. If they were married, it's often even more complicated, because in Germany any claim to spousal support has to be reviewed before she can get Bürgergeld, the basic income benefit for people without enough to live on. It's not unusual for several weeks to pass before any money actually arrives. These women get torn out of what looked like a stable, middle-class life, and then they're standing at our door.

Many of them, in that moment, can't even make a bank transfer, because for years they were responsible only for the house and the kids. Often they don't even have their own bank account. They have to relearn basic everyday skills from scratch. If you think this only happens to people from so-called disadvantaged, less educated backgrounds, you're very wrong. 

When some of my clients tell me about their pasts, I have to consciously hold on to my professional composure. Often I just want to cry. If you showed everything these women have lived through in a movie, critics would call it unbelievable or over the top. People who grew up in stable circumstances often have no contact with this kind of darkness, and it's hard for them to grasp these realities.

What condition are the women in when they arrive, and what do they need most?

That varies a lot, too, and you can't generalize. But what every woman needs above all is safety: a door she can close behind her, and someone who will listen. 

What we've seen more and more in recent years, though, is a clear rise in women with mental illness. Because of changes in Germany's support system for people with disabilities, more women with sometimes severe illnesses are ending up at our center. Often we're dealing with clients who are in the middle of an acute psychosis and have no awareness of being ill.

Our hands are often tied here, because our support system isn't set up for these women. We give them a chance, but usually we can't keep them for long. They often can't follow house rules, they sometimes act aggressively toward other residents, and any kind of constructive participation is nearly impossible.

On top of that, we don't have enough staff or enough caseworker hours to properly support such a high level of need. These women need specialized, individually tailored help. Right now they often fall through the cracks.

I'm talking about women who are banned from every psychiatric facility in the area. Even when intense conversations lead to some awareness of their illness and a willingness to enter inpatient treatment, they're often turned away or have to wait a long time on waiting lists. There are very few specialized programs, mostly in a handful of cities. Traveling a couple hundred miles alone is unrealistic in many cases. So we're often left with the awful experience of watching these women leave our center, too, and go back to the street.

You told us your work has taken away any rose-colored glasses. What do you mean?

I've already described the stories I run into in my work. Naturally, that makes it harder and harder to believe wholeheartedly in the “good” in people. Then there's the day-to-day behavior of some clients. More than once, for example, we've had to replace the coffee maker and electric kettle in our kitchenette (which we share with the women in the emergency shelter) after they were used to heat up feces or urine.

There are situations that push even our team to its limits. I meet women with very severe mental health struggles and sometimes highly disorganized behavior. For example, in acute psychotic states, where reality is perceived in a badly distorted way. In those moments, their actions aren't always understandable or controllable. Beyond that, I hear very hard life stories over and over. Women who suffered massive abuse in early childhood. Women who endured the worst violence for years or lived in extremely exploitative situations of dependence.

When you face that much suffering every day, and what people are capable of doing to each other, and you also see how often abuse hides behind supposedly “normal” or stable-looking facades, you can't help losing a bit of the illusion that the world is basically safe and good.

With sexual violence especially, we know the number of unreported cases is enormous, and the true extent can probably never be fully measured. That leaves its mark. I wouldn't say I'm getting numb. The stories still touch me deeply, but I have to admit that very little surprises me anymore.  

What resources would a center like yours need in order to help even more?

Money is missing everywhere, of course. The funding agencies generally cover only the bare minimum. Anything beyond that has to be paid for with donations, which means we're constantly out there asking for support.

Our emergency supplies are one example. We provide food and hygiene items like shampoo, body wash, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. If a woman needs a train ticket to another city and has no money, we'll cover it in individual cases from an emergency fund. We also offer a free breakfast for the women once a week. On weekends, we sometimes organize activities for our residents. That might be crafts, a trip to the movies, or a long walk together followed by a piece of cake.

These are small breaks and experiences that many of the women couldn't afford otherwise. All of it has to be paid for entirely by donations. We also get donated goods regularly, but our space is very limited, so we can only store and hand out so much.

The kitchens in our residential home, including our kitchenette, were more than 30 years old and badly worn out. Thanks to a generous donation from a local service club, we were finally able to replace them. The members even pitched in and helped with the installation. That was a huge win for us.

At the same time, support like that is never a given. There isn't someone donating large sums or making projects like this possible every month. We've also tried to get support through bigger fundraising events, like the “Weihnachtszirkus” (Christmas Circus), the charity livestream by German TV hosts Jan Böhmermann and Olli Schulz. But our center is probably just too small or too little known for formats like that.

You reached out after our reader question, and you told us you can't understand it when other moms get accused of being overprotective. What do you mean?

You had published the letter from the mom about how kids get along, where one mom forbade contact with the other's child. The mom who laid down the ban accused the other of being too cautious and said her distrust was completely unfounded. That really struck a nerve with me. For one thing, I think it's so sad when moms make life harder for each other. For another, I'm convinced that parents should be able to decide for themselves how they protect their kids, without being judged across the board for it.

We live downtown in a city of just under 100,000 people. I take my daughter (7) to school in the morning. Not all the way to the building, but halfway, and I keep her in sight until she walks onto the schoolyard. Some people would probably say I'm taking away a bit of her independence. Maybe so, but what matters most to me is that my child gets to school safely.

My daughter has also never slept over at a friend's house. I want her to be a bit older first. It's not about general distrust of other parents. I don't feel that way. It's more that I want to rule out dangers as much as I possibly can. For me, it's a very practical decision. 

I know that most people who've been victims of violence didn't experience it at the hands of a total stranger. It was people close to them, people they trusted, people they could hand their child over to with a clear conscience. I don't only see this at work. Among people we know, a daughter went to a sleepover at her friend's house and was abused there by the friend's older brother.

Two years ago, my husband's boss was beaten to death by her partner because she wanted to leave him. Everything I've seen and lived through in my life has left its mark. It can't be helped, and it shapes how I see risk. What matters to me is that how I protect my child stays my decision and that other people respect it.

What have you learned or understood through your work that you didn't realize before? 

It can happen to any of us. I've had several women in my care whose lives looked a lot like mine and who still ended up with us. We need to learn to be so much more grateful for what we have.