ISSUES
: Domestic Violence
Chapter 2: Tackling domestic abuse
25
missed opportunities to get help
for families experiencing domestic
abuse.
In the year before they got effective
help:
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Four in five high-risk victims
(78%) and two-thirds of medium-
risk victims (62%) reported the
abuse to the police.
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Nearly a quarter of high-risk
victims (23%) and one in ten
medium-risk victims went to
an accident and emergency
department because of their
injuries. In the most extreme
cases, victims reported that they
attended A&E 15 times.
New SafeLives data shows that 85%
of victims sought help five times on
average from professionals in the
year before they got effective help
to stop the abuse. Regardless of
whether the contact was about the
abuse, each contact represents
a chance for us to help the victim
disclose and get help – a chance that
was missed, leaving the family to live
with abuse for longer.
How can we find
families sooner?
All agencies must proactively
identify families living with
abuse
In recent years, an increasing number
of victims and families have been
identified by other agencies such as
health and children’s social services.
But still too many families are only
getting help when the abuse reaches
crisis point and the police are called
– and not every family gets the right
help then.
Other professionals may
also suspect that domestic
violence is happening, but not
know what to do
There are likely to be many more
victims and families in contact with
other statutory agencies, but they are
not identified as living with domestic
abuse. There is considerable potential
in locating domestic abuse specialists
in mainstream services, like hospitals.
Programmes in GP surgeries and
advice agencies have shown that it
is possible to significantly increase
identification. And these programmes
may also reach a group of victims and
families who are different to – and in
some cases, more vulnerable than –
those identified by other routes.
Children and adult risk are not
linked together – so we don’t
find and stop domestic abuse
Four in five of the families where a child
is exposed to domestic abuse are
known to at least one public agency.
But too often agencies do not link up
what they know about risks to each
individual in a family, so other children
or adults at risk of domestic abuse
are not identified. Children’s services
must actively link the risks between
mother and child in cases of domestic
abuse. And agencies focused on
adults – whether the victim or on the
perpetrator – must make sure that
they consider the risks to any children
in the family.
Some victims of domestic
abuse are not identified as
readily
Particular groups of victims may be
less visible to services or be given less
priority. These include young people,
victims from black, Asian and minority
ethnic (BAME) backgrounds, male
victims and LGBT victims. Services
may miss victims who remain in a
relationship with their abuser, a higher
proportion of whom may be BAME.
Some of this group may later leave the
relationship, but effective help should
be available to those victims at the
point they seek it. Services may also
not identify victims who do not have
children living with them. Significant
numbers of victims have high
levels of complex or multiple needs
related to mental health, drugs and
alcohol: specialist mental health and
substance misuse services should be
proactive in identifying them.
Friends and family are often
the first people to whom
victims or children disclose
abuse, but they may not know
what to do
Although friends and family may be
the first to know about abuse, they
may not know how to get help. And if
they do use local or national websites
or helplines to seek support, these
may not be linked to local systems
of support, so they might not get the
right response.
Recommendations
We need to create the system to find
every family as quickly as possible,
and get the response right, first time,
for every family.
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All mainstream services should
create an environment where
any member of the family can tell
someone about domestic abuse,
and know that it will be acted on
appropriately.
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Services should make identifying
domestic abuse part of their
everyday practice.
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There should be more specialist
domestic abuse services based
in the community – e.g. IDVA
services in A&E.
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Services should proactively
seek out victims from diverse
backgrounds – by locating
support in the community for
example.
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We should judge the success of
local domestic abuse strategies
on whether they have cut the
duration of domestic abuse.
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There should be meaningful ways
to seek help for individuals and
for friends and family if they are
worried about someone else.
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Services must see and respond
to the whole family – the child, the
victim and the perpetrator.
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Identifying abuse must result
in action that helps the family
become safe. And every area
should have enough capacity to
respond to every identified victim
and family living with abuse.
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SafeLives
will
investigate
the potential of a One Front
Door approach to increase
identification.
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The above information is
reprinted with kind permission
from SafeLives. Please visit
for further
information.
© SafeLives 2016
