Survivors of domestic abuse
Resources and information for people advising survivors of domestic abuse.
On this page
Benefits and domestic abuse
Information on the benefit rules for people who have experienced domestic abuse:
- Financial help for families fleeing domestic abuse
- Unwanted payments of abuser’s benefit into your account
- Exceptions to the two-child limit
- Work-related requirements if you have recently experienced domestic abuse
- Separated but living in the same property
- Value of property and its effect on means-tested benefits
Tools and templates
Tools
Use our tool to check if the value of a property you own can be ignored when working out your UC entitlement, if you have left it due to domestic abuse and create a note for your UC journal:
Our tools to help you work out benefit entitlement for migrants who have experienced domestic abuse (subscriber content):
Judicial review pre-action protocol template letters for advisers
Check our judicial review (JR) pre-action protocol template letters relating to domestic abuse and:
- child benefit
- the habitual residence test
- housing costs
- stopping unwanted payments into domestic abuse survivors' bank accounts
- universal credit advances
For copies of the JR template letters, advice about whether JR is the appropriate route, and for help with adapting the templates, contact our Judicial Review Project ([email protected]).
Legal test case
Permission to apply for Judicial Review has been granted in our test case challenging the requirement, if an exception to the two-child limit is to apply on the basis of non-consensual conception, that it is the third or subsequent child within the family that is conceived non-consensually
- Two-child limit non-consensual conception exception ordering rule: R (LMN and EFG) v SSWP [2024] EWHC 2577 (Admin).
Early Warning System
Our Early Warning System gathers information and evidence on how changes to the benefit system impact on the wellbeing of children and their families. To inform our work, send us details of cases: