ADVANCE programme – substance use and IPV

 

Domestic Abuse: Harnessing Learning Internationally under COVID-19 (DAHLIA-19) is a new research study capturing and assessing policy and practice initiatives in responding to Domestic Abuse (DA) under Covid-19 in four countries: UK, Ireland, Australia and South Africa.  The study team are  identifying policy and practice responses aimed at all family members experiencing DA (adult survivors, children and young people and perpetrators) and examining which initiatives have been joined up and which groups have benefited. The project is led by Professor Nicky Stanley, Connect Centre, University of Central Lancashire, with UK academic partners from the University of Edinburgh (Dr Claire Houghton) and is funded by the ESRC.

The team are working closely with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales, the Scottish Government and with DA partner organisations and experts to identify what DA practice and policy interventions and strategies have been introduced under Covid-19 in all four countries of the UK, whether successful or not.

Please send any information on interventions and strategies you know about, and any evidence of their impact across the following priority areas:

• First response services including: education, health and local authorities

• New ways of identifying & supporting adult survivors

• Identifying & supporting children/young people living with DA

• New or strengthened routes to safety including: o Housing & refuges o Awareness raising initiatives & prevention o Accessibility and delivery of outreach and community-based DA services o Co-ordination across services o Strengthening capacity of services & professionals.

• Policing and criminal justice • Perpetrator services

Please use these priorities as headings to structure your response and submit reports, relevant data sets or links to: dahlia@uclan.ac.uk or upload here.

The deadline is 19 March 2021.

The Government stated its intention Wednesday to publish a strategy on domestic abuse perpetrators as part of a wider domestic abuse strategy due later in 2021. The commitment came as Lords debated an amendment which would have put a legal requirement for a perpetrator strategy into the Bill.

 

This progress represents a significant victory for the campaign for a domestic abuse perpetrator strategy launched a year ago in parliament and backed by MPs and peers from all political parties as well as over 125 organisations and experts outside parliament including survivors of domestic abuse, academics, charities, local authorities and police and crime commissioners.    

The amendment, tabled by Baroness Gabby Bertin, and supported by both the Labour and Liberal Democrat frontbenches, called for a fully-funded domestic abuse perpetrator strategy and the further rollout of evidence-based interventions to prevent and end domestic abuse by responding to perpetrators. Many who support the amendment hope this marks a turning point in government’s ambitions to prevent domestic abuse in the first place, to hold those who are causing harm to account and support anyone who wants to change their behaviour with quality assured interventions.