I was meant to write this week about care as the fourth pillar of society in Uruguay, but alas, after reading Women's Aid Ireland’s latest Annual Impact Report, I do not think we can talk about care without also talking about safety.

Women’s Aid recorded 62,275 disclosures of domestic abuse against women and children in 2025, during 37,790 contacts with its services. Disclosures increased by 33% compared with 2024, reaching the highest level ever recorded by the organisation.

A percentage like 33% can sound clinical. It can slide past us. But these are not abstract figures.

They include women disclosing coercive control, physical violence, sexual abuse, economic abuse, stalking, threats to kill, abuse during pregnancy and post-partum, and threats to have children taken from their mothers.

Behind every number is a woman or child living with fear, control, harm, or the aftermath of harm.

And while the responsibility for abuse always lies with the abuser, we also have to be honest about the world women are trying to survive in.

Ireland is facing a housing crisis, a childcare crisis and a cost-of-living crisis. None of these causes domestic abuse. The abuser causes abuse. But these crises can make abuse harder to escape.

If a woman has nowhere affordable to go, leaving becomes harder. If childcare is unavailable or costs more than she can earn, working becomes harder. If everything is assessed as “household income”, but the household is where control is happening, financial independence becomes harder. If the cost of living keeps rising, it becomes easier for an abusive partner to withhold money, monitor spending, restrict choices, or make leaving feel impossible.

These are barriers that do not have to exist. They are policy choices, funding choices, workplace choices and social choices.

And because they are choices, they can be changed.

This is why I keep coming back to care.

Because care is not separate from safety.

For many women, especially mothers, safety is shaped by income, housing, childcare, school hours, transport, legal protection, work, and whether she has any real choices at all.

What the Numbers Are Really Telling Us

A 33% increase in disclosures is shocking, but the percentage alone does not carry the full weight of what Women’s Aid has recorded. It can sound like a policy figure, something that belongs in a report or a briefing note, when in reality it represents thousands of women and children living with fear, control, violence and the long shadow of abuse.

In 2025, Women’s Aid recorded 11,147 disclosures of coercive control. That matters because coercive control is still so often misunderstood. It is not simply one argument, one incident or one act of violence. It is a pattern of behaviour that can include intimidation, humiliation, isolation, surveillance, threats, control of money, control of movement, control of parenting, control of friendships, and control of ordinary daily decisions.

It is the slow shrinking of a woman’s life until choices that should belong to her no longer feel available.

The report also recorded 5,147 disclosures of economic abuse, and this figure has to sit at the centre of any serious conversation about women’s safety. Money is not just money when a woman is being abused. Money can mean transport, rent, food, childcare, a phone bill, legal advice, medication, documents, privacy and the ability to make a plan.

When money is controlled, withheld, monitored or sabotaged, a woman’s choices are controlled too.

But we also need to be careful not to speak about financial security only when the abuse is formally named as economic abuse. Financial insecurity runs through the whole picture. A woman may be experiencing physical violence, sexual violence, emotional abuse, coercive control, stalking or post-separation abuse, and still find herself trapped by the same impossible questions.

Where can I go? How will I pay rent? How will I feed my children? How will I afford childcare? How will I get to work? How do I leave safely when I have no savings or independent income?

This is why “just leave” is such a damaging and simplistic response. Leaving requires more than courage. It requires somewhere safe to go, money to survive, childcare that makes work possible, transport, documents, legal support, time, and a system that does not punish a woman for having children, for being out of paid work, or for being financially tied to the very person she is trying to escape.

When Systems Close the Door Too

The responsibility for abuse always lies with the abuser. That has to be said clearly, because nothing about housing, childcare, money or stress explains away violence, coercion or control.

But abuse does not happen outside the realities of women’s lives. It happens inside the society women are trying to survive in, and right now that society is placing impossible barriers in front of too many mothers.

For a woman who is safe, the housing crisis, childcare crisis and cost-of-living crisis are already exhausting. For a woman living with abuse, they can become part of the trap.

If rents are unaffordable and emergency accommodation is stretched, where does she go?

If childcare is unavailable, or costs more than she can earn, how does she work?

If social supports are assessed through household income, what happens when the “household” is the very place where control is happening?

If the cost of food, electricity, transport and school expenses keeps rising, how much easier does it become for an abusive partner to withhold money, question every purchase, monitor every euro, or tell her she could never survive without him?

These are not small practical details. They are the conditions that decide whether a woman has choices or whether she is forced to stay in danger because every route out has been made too narrow.

And for mothers, the calculation is rarely about one person leaving one home. It is about children, school routines, childcare, safety planning, housing, food, transport, court dates, benefits, work, trauma and the fear of what might happen next.

This is why we cannot keep treating economic independence as something separate from women’s safety. When a mother has no income of her own, no affordable childcare, no realistic access to work and nowhere affordable to live, we should not be surprised that leaving becomes complicated, delayed or impossible.

These barriers are not inevitable. They are created by policy choices, funding choices, workplace choices and social choices.

And because they are created, they can be changed.

Care Is Part of the Safety Conversation

This is why care cannot be treated as something soft, private or separate from the serious issues of safety, poverty and violence. Care is often spoken about as if it belongs inside families only, but the way we organise care shapes whether women can earn, whether they can leave, whether they can rebuild, and whether they have any real choices when their safety is at risk.

For mothers, the lack of care infrastructure can become one of the biggest barriers to independence. If childcare is unavailable, unaffordable or does not match the hours of available work, then employment becomes theoretical. A job may exist, but it is not truly accessible. A training course may be available, but it is not realistic. A woman may want to work, but if she cannot safely cover the school run, afterschool hours, sick days, appointments and the everyday reality of children, then the door remains half closed.

This matters even more for women who have been financially controlled, isolated, kept out of work, pushed out of work, or forced to carry all of the unpaid care while someone else controlled the money. Rebuilding independence is not simply about confidence or motivation. It is about whether the structures around her make it possible to take the next step without putting herself or her children under even more pressure.

That is why school-hour work matters. Not because every mother wants the same thing, and not because school-hour work is the full answer, but because for many mothers it is one of the few forms of employment that can fit around children without requiring childcare they cannot access or afford. It can allow a woman to begin earning, rebuild skills, reconnect with work, and create some financial security while keeping the rhythm of her children’s day stable.

Too often, school-hour work is dismissed as a preference, a convenience or a small perk for mothers. But for some women, it may be part of the route back to independence. It may be the difference between income being possible and income being completely out of reach.

If we are serious about women’s safety, then we have to stop treating care, childcare and flexible work as side issues. They are part of the conditions that make safety and independence possible.

Where Mums Hub Fits Into This

Mums Hub is not a domestic abuse service, and it is important to be clear about that. Women experiencing domestic abuse need specialist support, safe accommodation, legal protection, properly funded services, trauma-informed systems and people around them who understand coercive control and risk.

But women also need routes back to financial independence, and this is where our work sits.

At Mums Hub, we work with mothers who are trying to rebuild confidence, reconnect with skills, explore training, return to work, find school-hour opportunities, and have their experience of care recognised rather than dismissed. Many mothers have spent years keeping families going, managing children, homes, appointments, schools, crises, budgets and everything in between, only to be told later that this time counts as a gap.

For a mother trying to rebuild her life, especially one who has been isolated, financially controlled or out of paid employment for years, that “gap” can become another barrier. It can affect confidence, CVs, interviews, income, eligibility, identity and the belief that there is a place for her in the workforce again.

That is why we keep saying that mothers do not need pity. They need pathways.

They need employers who understand that flexibility is not a favour. They need training that fits around real family life. They need school-hour roles that are treated as legitimate work, not as an inconvenience. They need systems that recognise care as experience, not absence. They need income that can belong to them, in their own name, without every route being blocked by the assumption that the household is safe, fair or shared.

Because when a woman has children, “getting back to work” is not simply about finding any job. It is about finding work that is possible around care, safe around her circumstances, and realistic enough that she can actually sustain it.

This is the part of the wider picture Mums Hub is trying to build: not rescue, not promises, not quick fixes, but practical pathways towards confidence, income, dignity and choice.

And choice matters, because when women have no choices, abuse has more room to continue.

What Employers and Policymakers Need to Understand

Employers are not domestic abuse services, and they should never be expected to replace specialist support. But employers do shape access to income, and income is part of whether a woman has options. Policymakers are not standing inside women’s homes, but policy shapes housing, childcare, social protection, education, employment pathways and whether a mother is treated as an individual with rights or only as part of a household.

This is why the conversation has to move beyond awareness and into design. It is not enough to say that women should be supported to leave abuse if the systems around them make independence almost impossible. It is not enough to encourage women into work if the only jobs available are built around hours they cannot do, childcare they cannot afford, or assumptions that their unpaid care has no value.

A mother who can only work during school hours is not less committed. She is working within the reality of care. A mother who needs flexibility is not asking for special treatment. She is asking for work to be designed around the real conditions of her life. A mother returning after years of unpaid care is not starting from nothing. She is bringing experience, resilience, organisation, responsibility and skills that too often go unnamed.

If employers want to be part of a safer and fairer society, one practical place to begin is by opening more routes into work that mothers can actually access. That means school-hour roles, part-time roles with dignity, job-share options, flexible shifts, phased returns, remote or hybrid work where possible, and recruitment processes that do not punish women for caring.

For policymakers, it means looking honestly at the way household income rules, childcare gaps, housing shortages and employment supports can leave mothers with fewer options than they should have. If a woman’s safety depends on having income in her own name, then systems must be designed to recognise that financial independence is not a luxury. It is part of safety.

We cannot keep telling women to be brave while designing systems that make bravery almost impossible to act on. If we want women to have real choices, then work, care, housing and income have to be treated as part of the same safety conversation.

Care Is Not Nothing

When we speak about organising work around care, it is sometimes treated as if we are asking society to make space for something small, private or inconvenient.

But care is not nothing.

Care is what keeps the world going. It raises children, supports families, holds communities together, and allows every other part of society to function. The care that is so often treated as having no value is the same care growing future generations. It is what shapes children into people, teaching them safety, trust, belonging, confidence and love.

And yet, one of the most common things I hear from mothers is that they feel worthless because they are not bringing in money. Not because they are doing nothing, but because the care they are doing is unpaid, invisible and rarely treated as real contribution. They are raising children, holding families together, managing homes, appointments, school needs and everyday life, yet still feel they have no value because there is no payslip attached to their work.

That should trouble us, because when we make life impossible for mothers, we do not only harm mothers. We harm children too.

If a mother is living in fear, being controlled, abused, threatened, isolated or financially trapped, she cannot mother from the place her child needs her to be. She may love her child more than anything in the world, but love does not remove the impact of living in complete fear. Love does not create safety inside a home where there is none.

Children need safety modelled. They need confidence, worth, dignity, boundaries and stability modelled. But how can a mother model her worth when she is being stripped of it? How can she model financial independence when she is blocked from earning? How can she model confidence when every choice is questioned, monitored or punished?

This is why care belongs in serious conversations about safety, work, housing, income and policy. When we support mothers to access childcare, school-hour work, income and real choices, we are not only supporting women. We are strengthening the care they are able to give to the people they love most in the world: their children.

Care is not a soft issue. It is not a side issue. It is not a favour to mothers.

It is the foundation everything else is built on.

The Cost of Having No Choice

The Women’s Aid report is not only a report about domestic abuse. It is a report about fear, control, children, motherhood, money, housing and the cost of having no choice.

It shows us what happens when women are harmed by abuse, but also what happens when the systems around them do not offer enough ways out. It is not enough to tell women they deserve safety if safety is made unreachable by poverty, childcare gaps, unaffordable housing, lack of income, inaccessible work and systems that treat a mother’s dependence as normal.

If we are serious about women’s safety, we cannot only respond at the point of crisis. We have to build the conditions that make safety and independence possible before, during and after crisis.

That means properly funded domestic abuse services. It means safe housing. It means childcare that women can access and afford. It means social protection systems that recognise that a household is not always safe or fair. It means employers opening real routes into work for mothers, including school-hour roles, part-time roles with dignity, flexible work and pathways that recognise care as experience rather than absence.

Because safety is not only the absence of violence.

Safety is having somewhere to go. It is having something to live on. It is having people who believe you. It is having systems that protect you. It is having work that is possible. It is having choices that are real.

And for mothers, those choices are never only about them. They are about the children they are trying to protect, raise, love and guide through the world.

If we want safer women, safer children and stronger communities, we have to stop treating care as private, unpaid and invisible while expecting mothers to carry the consequences alone.

Care is infrastructure.

Financial security is safety infrastructure.

And no woman should be forced to stay in harm because every route out has been made too narrow.