01 · Recognition
When is it abuse?
Separation and divorce involve actions that are not, in themselves, abusive. A former partner may challenge a financial arrangement, make a court application, or raise concerns about a child.
The difficulty is that many of the same actions can also be used as a means of control, punishment or harm.
What matters is therefore not simply what someone does, but how and why the action is being used. An action that appears reasonable when viewed on its own may take on a different significance when it is repeated, deliberately obstructive, disproportionate, or forms part of a wider pattern of behaviour.
Looking across individual incidents can help make that distinction clearer. It can reveal whether apparently separate actions may be working together towards the same objective.
Constellation has been created to help you see whether individual experiences may form part of a wider pattern.
Is There A Pattern Here? →
02 · Understanding the Patterns
When Tactics Form a Pattern of Abuse
A relationship can end, but a former partner can still reach a woman through money, property, the children, legal processes, mutual contacts and everyday communications.
These can provide continuing routes through which control is exerted or harm caused. Tactics used through these different routes may appear unrelated, but when they are repeated or used in combination they can form recognisable patterns of abuse.
Understanding the pattern can provide a clearer picture of what is happening and the form of abuse a woman may be experiencing.
Understand the patterns of abuse →
03 · The PSA Framework™
When Different Patterns of Abuse Are Combined to Increase Harm
Different patterns of abuse can be combined to amplify their effects across a person's life. Their combined effects can destabilise the foundations on which everyday life depends, undermining financial security, housing, employment, relationships, physical safety and emotional wellbeing.
When a former partner uses different forms of abuse across multiple areas of a woman's life after separation, this can constitute a wider form of abuse known as Post-Separation Abuse.
The PSA Framework™ provides a way of seeing how these different forms of abuse can operate as parts of a wider pattern and what may connect behaviours that initially appear unrelated.
Explore the PSA Framework™ →
04 · Practical Guidance
Responding to Tactics
Once women begin to understand the patterns of abuse and the tactics being used against them, many begin looking for information about how others have prepared for and responded to similar situations.
That information can be difficult to find. Relevant research, professional guidance and women's experience are often scattered across different sources, making it difficult to build a clear picture of the approaches that have been used.
Harbour Lights identifies, curates and organises this information around the tactics and situations women may be facing, bringing together preventative and responsive approaches drawn from research, professional practice and women's experience.
This provides a more focused place to explore the approaches that have been used and consider what may be relevant to your own circumstances.
Explore practical guidance →
05 · Trusted Support
Finding the Right Support
Different forms of abuse can create very different needs for support.
Finding the right support can be just as difficult as finding the right information. With many organisations providing different forms of assistance, understanding what is available, where to look and which kinds of support may be relevant to your circumstances can be difficult.
Harbour Lights helps make that process easier by providing information to help women understand and navigate the support available to them. It also brings information about support services together in one place, providing a more focused way to identify organisations and programmes relevant to particular needs and circumstances.
Whether you are looking for legal support, emergency or long-term accommodation, grant funding, financial assistance, safety and stalking support, food and essential supplies, emotional support or specialist domestic abuse services, Harbour Lights has been designed to make finding and navigating the available support more manageable.
Begin exploring →
06 · Why We Are Here
The Problem We Set Out to Solve.
Abuse thrives when there is an imbalance of knowledge. One person knows what they are going to do next. The other is trying to work out what has just happened while fearing what comes next.
Without that knowledge, women are repeatedly forced to make life-changing decisions in the dark while trying to figure out how to respond.
But the knowledge does exist. Research contains part of the answer. Professional expertise contains another part. And the women who have lived through it hold the rest.
The problem is that this knowledge has remained fragmented, rather than being brought together and shared in a way that helps the women just starting this journey.
So we decided to change that.
Why We Built Harbour Lights →
