ADVANCE programme – substance use and IPV

 

 

 

 

 

A guidance document aimed at practitioners to improve working with survivors and perpetrators in homeless settings has been published. The charities in the UK who published the document include SHP (preventing homelessness transforming lives), FLIC (Fulfilling lives in Islington and Camden), Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse.

The document has been produced after consultation with practitioners (women’s specialists and perpetrator specialists in the domestic abuse field) and people with lived experience of homelessness and domestic abuse victimisation and perpetration.

The aim of the guidance was to:

• increase safety for survivors with multiple disadvantage
• to motivate perpetrators of domestic abuse to recognise and address their behaviour
• to enable staff to recorgnise abusive behaviour in homelessness settings
• to improve skills, confidence and safety for practitioners in these scenarios

The types of homelessness settings targeted were: outreach teams, supported accommodation, floating support teams and housing first services.

The report highlights factors which may be at play in these homeless settings with clients experiencing and perpetrating domestic abuse such as financial factors, drugs and alcohol problems, isolation and minimising/denying/blaming behaviours.

Some of the top tips recommended in the report include:

Two professionals working with a couple (where domestic abuse is present in the relationship) to increase safety, validate the survivors position and to engage the pair in separate conversations. Recommendations are provided on how to link with perpetrator services available and ideas are given on how to validate survivor’s experiences.  A FAQ’s section talks through common scenarios and practical advice for staff on how to respond to difficult situations when working with couples where domestic abuse is occurring.

You can access the report here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Femicide Census was started in 2015 in collaboration with Women’s Aid, law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, and Deloitte. This census was in response to the lack of official data from the UK government and an unwillingness to look at the problem of men’s fatal violence against women and girls as a coherent issue.

The first report published in 2016 was called ‘Redefining an Isolated Incident: An Analysis of the Deaths of Women Killed Between 2009 and 2015, in 2016.‘ In the 10 year period covered in the UK 1,425 women’s lives have been taken by men. The current report also shows that ‘Of the men who killed women, as recorded in this report, 29 (2%) are known to have killed before. In twenty cases they had killed women, in nine cases other men.’  additionally a further ‘117 suspicious deaths of women involving violent incidents or histories of violence where for various reasons the death could not be attributed to the suspected perpetrator or his actions.’

The authors indicate that little has changed over a 10 year period in the rate of femicide, the methods used or the context and relationships with men who murdered them.

The report comprehensively covers a number of areas related to femicide including:

Report areas, police areas, victim’s (relationship to perpetrator, locations, methods of killing, victims country of birth, occupation age, disability health and substance use issues) and perpetrator (country of birth, age bands, occupation, history of violence against women, if they have killed before) and findings on the criminal justice outcomes, methods and media representations of the murders.

The report makes recommendations these include:

Challenge to sex-based structural inequality and the recognition of the importance of socially constructed gender/sex role stereotypes in the UK

That the scene of a death of a woman should be secured and treated as a crime scene and a robust and thorough interrogation of the relationship and dynamics of the parties and their histories should be undertaken.

Support Services for women subjected to male violence should be prioritised includes increased funding including services

Targeting women from Eastern European and post-communist/post-Soviet nations and women at risk of trafficking and prostitution

You can access the full report here.