At the refuge they help 45 women and 60 children on average per year. It is life-saving work. Yet refuges up and down the country have been falling like dominos as a result of cuts to funding. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that over three-quarters of councils have reduced their spending on women’s refuges since 2010 . And it could get even worse. In October last year, the government revealed plans to remove refuges from the welfare system; this means that from April 2020, refuges will no longer receive housing benefit, which Charlotte says makes up about 40% of their income. "We have three income streams, the first and only stable stream for us is housing benefit." Money from the local authority makes up 30% of their income, but she says this always has a "big question mark over it" as councils don’t have to fund refuges because the women aren’t local. "So what the government is doing with our one stable income stream – housing benefit – is taking that out of the benefit system and giving that money to local authorities to distribute." She says it is "doubling our risk with the local authority", particularly because "it isn’t specifically ring-fenced for women's refuges, it's ring-fenced for short-term supported housing like drug and alcohol hostels". Women's refuges do come under the umbrella of short-term supported housing, but there is no onus on local authorities to fund them.