Why We Are Here · Harbour Lights Community

Why We Are Here

Better information can change the course of abuse.

Research has shown that access to tailored information and decision-making support can help women make more informed safety decisions and take more effective protective action. In one clinical trial, women receiving tailored online decision support were also more likely to have left their abuser after 12 months.⁷³⁸

Harbour Lights Community builds on this evidence to help women navigate abuse with greater understanding and confidence, while enabling organisations to provide more effective support with less time and effort.

01 — Our Purpose

Reducing the suffering and duration of abuse.

Our purpose is to reduce the suffering women experience through domestic and post-separation abuse, and the time it takes them to reach safety and independence.

We aim to help women recognise abuse and seek support earlier, respond more effectively to abusive behaviours and identify the resources needed to make leaving possible sooner.

We want more women to have a greater chance of establishing safe, independent lives after separation and achieving better outcomes for themselves and their children.

For organisations, our aim is to strengthen the support they can provide while reducing demands on their limited resources. We want to help professionals deliver more targeted and comprehensive support, reach more women and make better use of the time available to support each one.

A woman sitting on a grassy clifftop, looking out over a long beach and the sea.

A wooden signpost with five blank arrows pointing different ways, on a grassy hilltop above a valley.

02 — The Challenge

Women face life-changing decisions without the knowledge that could help them.

Each stage of abuse brings new questions and decisions, with profound consequences for a woman’s safety, finances, children and future.

Much of the knowledge she needs already exists in research, professional expertise and the experiences of women who have been there before. Yet it is rarely organised around the questions she faces as her circumstances change.

She is left to find that information, piece it together and work out how to apply it, often while coping with the emotional demands of abuse that has limited her cognitive capacity to process information. Without relevant knowledge, decisions can expose her to further harm or setbacks that prolong her path to safety and independence.

The people supporting her face a related challenge.

Professionals often have limited time and resources to find and share the depth of information each woman needs.

Harbour Lights Community helps women benefit sooner from knowledge that already exists, while helping organisations support them more effectively.

Understanding the Information Needs of Women Experiencing Abuse

For many women, abuse continues over years, with each stage requiring they make decisions that can have significant consequences for their lives and those of their children. Trying to figure out what is happening, the risks and how to respond places considerable demands on their mental and emotional capacity, often when abuse has already left them overwhelmed.

The infographic below illustrates six stages women can experience. It highlights why the journey can take so long. It shows how information at each stage could help women make more informed decisions with the ultimate goal of living safely and independently.

Infographic: A Woman’s Journey of Abuse. Six stages, each with the question she is asking. Domestic abuse: 01 Recognition (Is this abuse?), 02 Understanding (Why?), 03 Responding (What do I do?), 04 Support for leaving (How can I leave?). Post-separation abuse: 05 Post-separation abuse (Why hasn’t it stopped?), 06 An uncertain time (How does this end?).

03 — What Research Tells Us

Better information can influence decisions and improve outcomes.

Research into domestic abuse interventions has examined whether tailored information and decision-making support can help women navigate abusive relationships more effectively.

Research has found that women receiving tailored information and decision-making support can experience greater confidence in their safety decisions and take more effective protective action. Some studies have also found improved outcomes, including a greater likelihood of leaving an abusive relationship.^{571, 738}

Broader reviews of digital interventions have identified benefits for women’s wellbeing and reductions in certain forms of abuse, although findings vary and longer-term effects remain less certain.⁵⁷³

Why this matters to our work

These findings support the potential value of information designed around a woman’s circumstances and the decisions she faces. They help explain why we place such importance on making complex knowledge relevant, understandable and practical to use.

A Harbour Lights Community guide, Navigating Economic Abuse, standing on a kitchen worktop.

04 — How We Do It

Turning existing knowledge into information women can understand and use.

To achieve these aims, we bring together lived experience, published research and professional expertise to build a comprehensive understanding of abuse and the ways women can respond.

We organise that knowledge around the questions women are trying to answer at different stages of abuse. This makes relevant information easier to find and understand, helping women recognise their circumstances and make more informed decisions about what to do next.

We also design our resources around the operational realities of the organisations supporting them. By integrating into existing services, our resources can help professionals provide more comprehensive information with less time and effort.

05 — Our Resources

Different resources, designed around the questions women need answered.

Everything we create serves the same purpose: making relevant information easier to find, understand and use, whether women access it independently or through a professional supporting them.

Different resources.
One philosophy.

A white lighthouse on a rocky headland above a calm sea at dusk.

06 — Our Commitment

Making knowledge easier to access, understand and act upon.

We bring together knowledge that women would otherwise spend considerable time and emotional energy finding and piecing together themselves. By organising it around the questions they face at each stage of abuse, we help them understand their circumstances more quickly and make informed decisions with greater confidence.

Our ambition is to reduce the suffering and duration of abuse by helping women to understand what is happening, to respond more effectively and to move towards safety and independence sooner.

No woman should have to learn through her own experience and isolation what other women, researchers and professionals already know.