Adapting to Disaster: Domestic Violence Shelters and South Africa’s COVID-19 Lockdown

Domestic violence shelters have provided essential services throughout the lockdown. What was it like to do so? To find out, please join us for the launch of "Adapting to Disaster," the second brief from the research project, "Care and Support in a Time of Epidemic."

Drawing on interviews at 28 shelters in eight provinces, the brief outlines how shelters adapted to the lockdown and identifies the multiple processes and actors that enabled them to do so. A closer look at shelters' admission and occupancy rates during the first six months of the lockdown enables Brief 2 to build on Brief 1, which critically reviewed the available data on domestic violence during the lockdown, and points to the diversity of shelters' experiences. These figures also invite questions around how government departments like the Department of Social Development responded to the lockdown.

The research suggests that while the lockdown did result in resourcefulness and adaptability, it also revealed deeply entrenched faultlines largely impervious to change - even in the face of disaster.

Moderator
Kailash Bhana