Identifying and dealing with domestic abuse part 2 - Video and audio transcripts

so statistically there are a large number of statistics floating around including you know the safe lives website that I've popped on the chat um but locally coventry does have one of the highest rates of domestic abuse in west midlands and in the year of 2020 we had over 10 000 um calls for domestic abuse in um in coventry alone and as a region west midlands police received more than 100 domestic abuse calls every hour it's one of our biggest areas of work within the police and is ever-increasing it's gone up by in excess of um 40 45 over the last two years

um as you can see from the um recording of the offences a criminal recording has gone up by 45 percent uh covid um saw an increase in uh incidents um reporting um and also the complexity of those incidents was quite severe some really horrific violence that we saw over that period of time and actually the incidents haven't declined the police have yet to plateau on their uh increasing numbers um at the current time so from coventry haven um their uh data shows a 40 increase as well so all agencies are really um having to try and manage a massive increase in demand in the city so and nationally we know that three women a week are killed by their partner and ex-partner historically we used to quote that as two that's increased um over the first 16 days of lockdown 16 women and children were killed uh which

which was reported uh in the news and there was at the beginning of lockdown you'll remember from all the uh briefings that were done that domestic abuse was very high on the agenda for uh the public in announcements made by the prime minister and other members on the covid briefings on a daily basis and that was because it was recognised that the lockdown would isolate women and other victims of domestic abuse even more uh hence there were amendments made to that being able to seek help over that period of time and i think it actually really focused the nation and professionals on it probably for the first time in any concerted way for some time which is probably what contributed in a lot of ways to an increase in the reporting as well to the police um each year nearly two million people in the uk suffer some form of domestic abuse 1.3 million of female victims hence we often fall into the default of she's the victim and he's he's the perpetrator and that's not taking away the fact that we know there are male victims of domestic abuse um and um but the figures still indicate it's very much violence against women and girls hence there's the national uh international and national strategy and local strategy around um challenging and dealing with violence against women and girls and women are much more likely than men to be victims of high risk or severe domestic abuse 95 percent of the cases being discussed at the multi-agency risk assessment conferences um across the country which look at how to manage risk for the highest risk of victim they're women and obviously they get the support of an independent domestic violence advocate service through that that process but um all the data still indicates that women are the primary victims of domestic abuse it's most prevalent data okay next slide please i think just jane just to add that i think there was some work around coventry's numbers had gone through the roof and i think that's for lots of reasons isn't it but i think we weren't out of kilter with that just looked at something to say we are now killed with some of the other areas in that you know some of our services are very well known and there's been lots kind of promotion around as you say there are reasons why some of those numbers have gone up not just that the incidents have risen as well isn't there i think the the only thing is the numbers haven't gone down either so yeah they've maintained which would indicate that we're doing a relatively good job of um you know reassuring um and getting that access um much more improved than we have done previously i think um sorry jane can i just say um and the male victims uh quite often their abuser is male um and that males are as at risk of violence from other males as females are yeah and we've seen more males come forward i think in the last year haven't we jamie definitely yeah um somebody's got their hand up um nicola lee

i want to ask a question okay that was by mistake we're all waiting for a question then all right so some of the information we're going to show you now is based on data that's done by safe lives who are um a national organization that advised the home office um and lots of other PCC boards and all sorts of stuff around domestic abuse and interventions so um we know from the data that they collated that survivors of mental health needs are more likely to be experiencing higher levels of abuse and multiple disadvantage and you can see from the data here the differences around the coercive controlling behaviour harassment and stalking those with mental health needs are shown in the red and with no mental health needs are shown in the blue and so it breaks that down into the controlling behaviours harassment stalking physical abuse please note the sexual abuse that was mentioned earlier on um a significantly uh greater uh impact percentage for those with mental health needs financial difficulties um we talk about economic abuse because it's bigger than just financial abuse

now um but obviously significantly more um victims in that disability so um those that have additional uh disabilities as well as mental health needs and then we've got the o's with alcohol and drug misuse with mental coupled with mental health and then the lg bt plus uh communities as well so um i think you need to be alive to the fact that it's more likely to be happening um with people that have mental health needs uh and other um care and support needs or other protected characteristics and it's and we don't know about it because it's more challenging there's additional barriers to reporting um hence the reason we're having these conversations at the moment to raise your awareness on that could have the next slide please tom

so this is some data around older people so a victims age 61 plus are much more likely to experience abuse from an adult family member than those 60 and under and obviously the slide around older people that we referred to earlier um sort of probably explains some of the the reasons behind that and also we know the increasing prevalence of abuse from adult daughters and sons and family members for older people but in addition to that they're also more likely to experience abuse from a current partner than those under 60 older victims are less likely attempt to leave and that's because i think there are services are less accessible um and um it takes it's it's hard isn't it the older you are to leave it's hard anyway to leave and i think it's even more challenging uh the older you are because more isolation less financially um dependent or independent so there's lots of reasons why somebody uh can't leave there are additional needs okay and then they're also more likely to be living with the perpetrator uh and continue to live with the perpetrator even after getting support so um risk assessments and um risk management and safety plans are critical to supporting victims that remain with their uh perpetrator here and older victims are significantly more likely to have a disability a third of whom in this data had a physical disability which also causes barriers to accessing services with mobility adaptions and and other things that are required to support any victim with a physical disability okay next slide please tom

uh and we and this is another slide from safe lives and this is from 2015 it's not an up-to-date slide but it also gives you some prevalence around the differences for those that have long-standing illness or disability uh on an age range of 16-59 and this is about partner abuse from intimate violence over the 2015 year

so again you can see men and women are separated women again are experiencing more abuse of any type um than men but to those that have no long-standing illness or disability and then we talk about the um non-sexual abuse um partner abuse uh family abuse and then we talk about sexual abuse and then the stalking elements um compared to those that have no long-standing illness or disability so it is really prevalent um in for people that have care and support needs their risk increases okay next slide please okay we're on to sports service and interventions

do you want to start jamie with the behaviour stuff sorry yeah um so as we've mentioned before the safe to talk helpline um is available seven days a week um and you can get through to the independent domestic violence advocates um also at panaga through that 10800 number um the sanctuary scheme is available which is for victims who want to stay in their own homes and it offers some level of extra security so it might be a peep hole in the door or window locks change the locks um door and window alarms um so again the o800 number will get you through to that service um quite recently we're now able to offer um if you're in our refuge and that's controversial or valley house um or you've received the sanctuary scheme and are in your own home safely now um if there's children involved they can be referred into the wish project with relate which is great because prior to this it was only available via referrals from social workers that's really good um there's domestic violence notices and orders that are in place now from following the domestic abuse act and we can support you with all of this restraining orders non-molestation orders um and occupation orders which are um if you need to remove somebody from your property and we've got access to legal clinic that can um support you with that and also if you need the the restraining order or the non-mull urgently and we can go to the court and actually get an emergency one so and support you with that just add on the uh so our main providers in the city so valley house and does our accommodation but there's also um you do have spaces obviously at haven and panaga have spaces as well and i know that particularly panaga and haven have a drop down on their website for different languages and also between you have i'm not sure how many languages do you think you cover jamie between you and panaga um it's been reviewed at the moment but it's increased it was 41 but that's that's increased now because we've just got another eastern european worker yeah so so it's great that we've got that range of um people that can and off that support and that kind of interaction really but um all the services have their own websites but you'll see later on in the slides there is a slide in on safe to talk it actually is in one place about the service information and i think as james referred to wish to our children's support work for those and where there's domestic abuse and they're accessing some kind of accommodation um but also we have choose to change which is a perpetrated program which is um carried out by relate um but that will be in as like the slides in the information we send out so next slide on

yeah so this this is a screenshot which isn't great but we just wanted to kind of include it and this talks about the different programs and what they kind of include and the criteria but as i say um we can put the link in the chat and you can see that a bit clearer if you if you access the safe to talk but again if you're not clear or not sure i think the safe to talk line is is always really useful as jamie says for professionals wanting to talk something through or if you want advice it's always um available to use yeah also about that and these are the um services that are funded by the local authority contract so yeah um all four uh yeah all four um organizations actually offer more than that this is just the the part that's funded by the local authority yeah i suppose the recognition that um in coventry we are fairly well resourced i think we've found that from some of the regional and national groups we attend that we do have really good provision and we're quite ahead in some of our practices and sometimes i think we challenge ourselves about that and because we always want to do more but recognizing that we are in a quite good position really with in terms of the resources we have next slide on

i'll put the safe to talk link i think jamie has as well we'll all be posting the safe to talking won't be in there so that's the main port call we definitely would say that i'm just going to take you through a bit of an overview of the domestic abuse act and you may or may not have seen um information about it but it took four years and so it started off its journey in 2017 and actually received royal ascent on the 29th of April this year and through lots of campaigning and and numerous pages of the bill that were debated and things that didn't come in and didn't uh that did so um yeah so um a landmark piece of legislation that's been long awaited and long overdue i think um but yeah again i can post the link to it in the chat and i suppose is the what we need to remember is although it came um it was received all attention sent on the 29th of april some of the elements of it have not commenced and there's a commencement schedule so so i'll talk to you about some of the bits but some of the bits are still kind of um slowly coming into force really so james mentioned about this new statue definition and that's about having um so that we all have a consistent approach and a consistent understanding of that new definition that's in law and that recognizes as we said it's it's about that and they would talk about a personal connection but it recognizes not only those in a relationship but those um like ex-partners but also family members so it's understanding the dynamics of who can be affected by domestic abuse and the definition is for those 16 up but it what it constitutes is the relationship and then also the behaviour and that listed behaviour that goes with it and back to the domestic abuse commissioner who is nicole jacobs and she's in post and i mentioned that she's got a great website which is always worth keeping an eye on around and not only kind of um resources but research papers and just general information about what's happening but she has a function nationally and will have um a board that will uh look at kind of good practice and look at what we're doing nationally and uh should we have a responsibility now to respond to any requests from her so there'll be a kind of developing relationship between her office and kind of local areas really and we have kind of one of her offices that sits on some of the groups that we attend so the domestic abuse act established the need for a domestic abuse local partnership board and the local authority had a requirement to form that board which they did and they first met in may and uh currently a meeting by monthly and it's chaired by councillor pervez akhtar and is generally staffed on by um director level or senior managers and so again kind of working through the domestic abuse act has given quite a few uh statutory duties to local authorities so that board will oversee that and and stands and similarly as rebecca said about um that statue board it sits in a similar way to the safeguarding adults it sits on its own um it extends the controlling or questive behaviour fence to cover post separation abuse a real kind of recognition in the act and i think we've referred to him as the presentation that and often that abuse escalates kind of post separation so some of the kind of deaths we've seen have been kind of after relationships have finished so that act has really recognized that that's um part of what we need to include and recognize the actor explicitly recognized children's of children as victims of domestic abuse if they see here or experience the effect of that abuse and interestingly you'll be aware that the kind of seeing here as part of the child protection process was probably already in our safeguarding processes but they've kind of taken it that step further around experiencing the effect and i know that the we're told that the domestic abuse commissioner it's one of her real priorities about the work that she'll be she'll be looking at um it places a duty on local authorities in england to provide support to victims of domestic abuse and their children in refugees and other safe accommodation um so we have now got that duty we've also got some um funding that supports that and we're just a process of kind of rolling out the services that will make sure that support's in place and as um jamie alluded to we've been able to extend the wish project which previously was only for children that were on uh child protection looked after or children in need kind of um positions so we've been able to extend some of what we've what we've we were doing previously um one of the big ones for us is around housing so it provides that all hell all eligible homeless victims of domestic abuse automatically have a priority need for homelessness assistance and previously they would have to undergo what's called a vulnerability and check they don't need to do that now they're classed as um having priority but i think that's a real challenge for ourselves and housing colleagues and we're kind of working through that and something that we're doing currently and we'll talk a little bit more about is a training needs assessment and there will be some specific sessions on how we're um we need to meet our duties in relation to the act with specific focuses on places like housing um places the guidance supporting the domestic violence disclosure claim scheme claire's law on a statutory footing um you may be aware of this i think it came in in 2013 and there's two parts to the um claire's law the right to know right to ask and the right to know so if you're in contact with a relationship relationship with somebody where you think there may be some um past abusive kind of behaviours you can kind of approach the police and they and then we'll look at information and decide whether they feel that there's within your kind of um you know uh it's in your best interest to kind of um pass that information on but what they've wanted to do is create some statutory guidance around claire's law which comes in um in the next couple of months so we haven't actually got that at the moment

the police were also given new powers um around domestic abuse protection notices and um they were there's been a word change so there was a domestic abuse there were domestic violence protection notices and domestic violence protection orders they've now changed to recognize that kind of um whole picture around abuse is not just the violence um and those um orders and notices can be brought in for perpetrators and um can kind of protect the victim for 48 hours or kind of and put restraints in place that protects the victim um in an ongoing way um and again uh what we're being told is that there'll be pilot areas to roll that out again towards the end of the year or beginning of next um but i think that they apparently will be um have more kind of uh be more stringent than perhaps some of the orders and notices we've previously seen yeah yeah i think the plan for the domestic abuse protection orders is that they will last longer it's not just the police that can apply for it but it's complicated in who's going to police them for once for a better phrase because breaching them will be a criminal offence and also there's a positive requirements for engagement that can be added to the order so for a perpetrator to might be to attend an alcohol program or have some a drug program or even maybe engage with a perpetrators program but that will have an impact on service delivery and how that's reported in so it's not as straightforward as what we currently have so that's why they're piloting it in a right in three areas uh just to try and iron out some of those issues before it goes nationwide definitely and i'm just gonna say some outside it's gone from my head now what i was gonna say is i mean this is this is a really brief overview of the act um but what there are fact sheets that go with the different elements so again we can kind of make sure that you've got the links to those to fully understand them but i think that um a lot of this um has come in we it came in april but there's been a real kind of roll out of information and some of it has been um as i say comes in at different elements we've actually only just seen um the domestic view statutory guidance was only and the regulations that went with it were actually published on the first of october so we've just got those so that multi-agency guidance that people need to work to um has any just come out and so we're still kind of um yeah kind of gaining all the tools we need to fully understand what's being expected of us in order to kind of roll it out to people like yourself so and it doesn't address everything so we've still got the um insecure immigration status no equals to public funds that it doesn't address it doesn't address support for those remaining in their own home and those services and we're actually still waiting on the government strategy for domestic abuse to come out together with the perpetrator strategy for domestic abuse and the new victim strategy so there's a lot of things that have yet to come in that still might make changes to what we're delivering so we're in a lot of um flux at the moment with with how that's rolling out um charlotte um you've got your hands up there yeah um just a quick question you said about um on the perpetrator side that they have does the sector also include support for them to help them with their behaviour and making positive changes to their life as well sorry i didn't pick all of that up i got some of it but not all of it sorry um i was just asking if this act also supports the perpetrator and making changes to their life so that they're having a repetition of this if they do want to live in the same house still or anything like that yes it does uh but we are waiting on the government doing the domestic abuse perpetrators strategy the national one um so i would be fair to say that the jury is still out on perpetrator programs and how successful they are because um it's it's about behavioural change and that takes a long time to do um and it's got to be tailored to the right it's not about anger management this is about power and control um and i think um certainly uh in the west mids the um police crime commissioner has been piloting over the last three or four years various perpetrator interventions but the evaluations recently have not been um very positive around the outcomes for that and i think in a couple of the perpetrators programs on the region of something like 1100 uh perpetrators referred overall but only actually 31 fully completed the course because it's quite challenging so there's a real national review on on interventions the thresholds um whether it's entrenched high risk perpetrators versus low the lower um or medium risk uh levels of um perpetrating behaviour so there's a huge amount of work that's got to go into what works um and what that looks like uh because it's a huge investment of money uh for at the moment very little outcome yeah it's it's hard to know what the outcomes are because how do you measure the outcomes of a perpetrator program is it and that they go from um you know if it's physically violent um from once a week to once a month is that class to success that's where i struggle is what how do they measure the outcomes and and how do they measure those outcomes without referring to the victim and the children you know victim including the children that's that's where i struggle with uh and i think what's been found from agencies as well is that it's not only about we've got the perpetrator program but actually to have the conversations or get people ready for that kind of you know to just to approach the subject is another issue as well isn't it so i think you know there's more work as i said be interesting to see the perpetrator strategy i think so yeah definitely because this um they have to um say that they or they have to provide the either partner or ex partners details and the important bit alongside the domestic violence perpetrator program is that their the victim in the children including the children are being supported while they're on the program because if they're still living in the same household there's things that trigger that could create incidents so it's really important that they're getting that parallel support alongside and can feed in um as to what's happening

all right thank you sorry tracy

that wasn't me i was kicked out okay that's very strange somebody got a hand up no we're done so you want to carry have you done that one sorry next slide tom before i get kicked out again

so we've talked a little bit about this and i've referred to so um there's seven seven parts to the domestic abuse act and part four kind of is the local authorities kind of duties and that really just it's this is taken from part four so every local authority has um to make arrangements for the assess or make arrangements the assessment of um the need for domestic abuse support in its area and what we have to do we've actually just completed our some areas are still starting we've just done our domestic abuse needs assessment but we have to review that annually and and do a full refresh every three years so we're saying to you about the extended kind of duties as part of this act that's one of them we also have to prepare and publish um our strategy for this provision so that um that element of domestic abuse support for those in accommodation that strategy needs to reflect that we currently have a 2018 to 2023 strategy what we did as part of our needs assessment for the commissioned provider and they were asked to produce two addendums one on the impact of covered in domestic abuse and the second on um what we needed to do in response to our duties with the safe accommodation so we're looking currently at how that fits with our 2018-2023 strategy and the um the local authorities the board needs to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of that strategy and we also have a duty to provide an annual report to the domestic abuse commissioners so as i say those kind of new duties rolling out um with the act um we are just just to add as well that we have we've done our um domestic abuse needs assessment but as part of that we've also um i alluded to earlier about our training needs assessment so we've commissioned a lady called jenny lawton from uh coventry haven who is currently um kind of midway through speaking to agencies and organizations about domestic abuse that's kind of training these and what she's aiming to do is roll out a program um of training that will be around domestic abuse but also look at the domestic abuse act and as i say some of those sessions will be particularly focused on elements of the act including kind of housing so if that's something you're interested in i think we've um can put our details in the chat we're happy to talk to you a bit more about that because we want to ensure in coventry we've got a real kind of um cohesive and joined up approach to what we're delivering around domestic abuse and training anything else to add jane you want to add around the act there's anything else about that no i don't think so i think that's a flavor of it yeah definitely next slide tom

okay and just before we go on to that i think we've i've mentioned we've mentioned safe to talk and i think some of you will be aware but we also do um a domestic abuse bulletin which is issued quarterly just went out in october but that's a real good um kind of vehicle for information for professionals about what's happening so currently in the latest edition there's a new welfare advice service from a child property action group which is just for domestic advice domestic abuse victims and so the information is in the edition about that and also um we talked about the multi-agency risk assessment conference there's an a success story in there and there's also some information about and we recently commenced a domestic abuse champions multi-agency champions network and we're on just planning our um there's four sessions per year of that of four hours for each session um generally um but we're just planning our third cohort and again that's a real good network to ensure consistent practice the sharing of resources just networking between agencies and we've had a real good mix of um housing adults kind of and children's services and change grow levy do drug and alcohol schools universities so we've got a great mix of that but again if it's something you're interested in joining and joining then again kind of um by all means contact me that wouldn't be a problem so tracy is it possible that when we circulate the slides we could put the um we could put the bullet and we could have bullets

yeah and um yes actually Sarah Bayer is the network coordinator so I'd say I think it's in the um bulletin probably go directly to her if you're interested so it's coming to me and me uh me so I'm posting you on really so I don't want to do that in the chat Tracy oh thanks Jamie

okay next we've got our next slide I'm sorry

yeah these are just our um social media sites we're also on LinkedIn as well um just if you could follow and share um and raise awareness and you know to let the victims know that um we're there to support them um would be great if you could do that please thank you tend to share quite a lot of useful up-to-date information which is really fine

we didn't know if we'd have time to do this and some of the information we've actually covered in um the last couple of hours so it'll be interesting to see whether you remember any of this so some we have and some we haven't but um on to the next slide tom we're just going to do a bit of a brief quiz tracy yes sorry can i just uh mention something that i think it's really important and but we haven't spent too much time on is um stalking behaviours especially at the end of a relationship and how disturbing that is and it can be um seen as quite um romantic it might be uh things being sent to work or flowers being left on the car or on the doorstep um and you keep bumping into that person i just wanted to say how uh disturbing that behaviour is and that when we refer to stalking it's kind of in a jokey fashion it's it if that is happening that is extremely disturbing so that's quite high risk yeah i'm i was just going to finish by saying we've had to obviously cover a lot of information in the last couple of hours but just to also mention that um we have a female genital mutilation kind of project based at haven fgm um and again they're happy to be contacted if people need support and also on a base abuse and forced marriage um we know recently we've had um some cases some teams highlighting the um honda based abuse kind of um being a bit more prevalent and wanting more information and i know panaga particularly um are able to support with that so if that's something that's of interest or you want more information again all means contact us but we haven't obviously been able to cover those in any depth today so okay um we're just going to move on then to this just a brief quiz just to to round up really and um maybe kind of use the chat function or hand up if um quickly or thanks jamie's just put that into the chat around the fgm project what do people think the cost is of domestic abuse nationally and locally any guesses do you remember from some of the information we put in

any hands up or anything in the chat let me have a quick look so I'm just if anyone's added anything no no yeah okay so um 66 billion nationally um is what's spent on domestic abuse and 33 million locally so um and that's for a range of reasons but is is obviously huge amount of money that's um used on domestic abuse

okay how many people suffer some form of domestic abuse nationally each year and again we have mentioned this already so let's see if people remember

anything in the in the in the uh chat two or two million well done well done there all right well done so yeah two point two two million um one point three and three million women six hundred thousand men eight point two percent of the women uh the population and four percent of men and remember what the acronym mark stood for anyone remember that

shout out if you want to go on take your mic off

multi-agency risk assessment conference yes well done well done risk risk assessment risk assessment conference yes well done and what is the percentage breakout breakdown of men and women when they're often presented to marek anybody know or take a guess given that some of the information we've given already we're talking higher for women potentially what might be the percentage that would go to marac have a guess

is it 95 yes that was dead on have you been looking someone's just wrote it down that's why well done well done oh and again this one we have covered how many women are killed per month by current or former partnering England and wales do you remember we talked i think we talked about per week yeah three that's three per week yeah so it has gone up and 16 well done yeah 16 three a week well done Esther yeah got there next slide tom

so how many children live in homes where is a high risk of domestic abuse nationally

have a guess

any guesses

so we know one in five in their lifetime one in one is successful nearly one in five 130 000 um will live in homes uh where there's a high risk of domestic abuse so again huge amount of children six what is the average time victims of high risk of serious harm or murder live with domestic abuse for the average time that they live with domestic use for

so we know there's many barriers to accessing support but how long do you think they go before they do anything

yes so it's somebody going to speak 10 years 10 years oh no you think you actually you think that it would be it's not as long but two to three years i think you know is i mean all this this data is taken from safe lives which i know jane's already putting the link into uh but it talks about 85 of victims will seek help five times before they actually get effective help and on average domestic abuse victims I think I said earlier will have 50 episodes of domestic abuse before they actually do anything so an awful lot of incidents an awful lot of time that people are living with it before actually and get any effective help what percentage of high-risk victims report having mental health issues and again we've kind of looked at this haven't we

i guess

40 40 so as we looked at that slide that really talked about mental health being a feature but all the areas of abuse being more and for some of the groups that you'll be working with so really exasperated um I think that's there's a lot that's undiagnosed and this is exactly jane this is the bits that we're aware of isn't it so there's probably an awful lot yeah yeah definitely so last one how many calls each year although to the police in England wales about domestic abuse and jane kind of talked about um you know kind of west midlands and what we've seen how many calls each year do you think they receive

okay it's over one million they think one about on average one every 30 seconds um for domestic abuse and you know we know that it's a big issue for our area but in many areas in the country and particularly with lockdown in 15 seconds for the west mids right so a lot higher than yeah similar force area such as greater manchester liverpool they'll be similar data and it may well be that those that cover more rural communities have the issues but they aren't reported so um that's part of the complexity of it definitely and this that's unusual it's not what i was going to say the it's hard for the victim to actually call 999 isn't it so that's like the tip of the iceberg really yeah deborah's got a hand up hi yeah no i was just on those figures how many actually go to court and get sentenced the perpetrators i'm going to say very few the conviction rate is really very low and that's even more complicated currently by what's happened over covid with the court shutting down and the backlog we've got on um of cases um i think uh the police probably have got to a point where um based on their resources they can still only deliver us the same number of outcomes yet the volume is increasing so the percentage of what they're doing is reducing um but and it has been really really challenging please don't determine charges uh cps do and you'll know from everything that's happened with the um sarah everard murder that that is very much a focus at the moment around women and girls within the criminal justice system uh there's plenty of reports around online around how police need to change their approach which i don't disagree with but there is that lack of resource as well and where that where that is within the organization um and i think um it's the whole pro the whole criminal justice process right from the considering reporting and that victim's journey that we just need to be much better at i think with more support more victims will go to court but then for an awful lot of victims that's not the right route for them at all so it's about about making sure that they're given the right choices um and they're informed you will know from the uh slides um it was a conscious decision by myself not to touch on capacity um only because i think the dynamics of that are quite complicated in a large presentation like this but um

often we hear well a person's got capacity please remember that coercive control impacts on somebody's capacity to make free and informed choices so you have to bear that in mind when you're looking at the coercive control elements of domestic abuse and consider that when you're doing that risk assessment okay thank you very much i could give you some data but i think it would be too shocking i'll i'll see if i can find it before we finish i suppose you know again we've we're trying and i think we're we're trying all sorts and all kind of approaches and you know i said earlier we are really looking that we are ahead of lots of other areas in the work we've got and the resources we've got on how we're approaching it and one of the other things that we have started in coventry is a new project and co-located with the police so there's two haven workers and a banaga worker based um at the police who when there is a call um around standard medium risk kind of um domestic abuse incident they will go out when it's safe to do so and support that victim into services and can also refer perpetrators that's a um a really new approach and other areas are looking to how we're getting on it with that in coventry and we've already seen a huge amount of referrals into services for that so i think we're just really keen to work with all services and try all things to make sure you know and this is a big issue and um organizations that we need to make sure we're connected with all our work and people like yourselves to make sure that we're all you know doing the best we can and um yeah approaching a really kind of challenging issue so so i know we've we've actually covered quite a bit today um but we're happy i think as rebecca says to respond to any of the things that have been gaps or whatever that we can maybe come back a later date and touch on um but hopefully we've given you a bit of a flavor as to um and some tools to go away with and some information that's hopefully helpful and if jane or jamie want to add anything i was just going to say the um the best evidence for uh to get a conviction is the actual victim isn't it um and it's incredibly hard to go through that process so part of the domestic abuse act as well is about the special measures isn't it that will be given as standard um in court but um like jane said with the with the delays with the court process because of covid um you know it might be a year or more and they may have moved on and you know kind of drawn a little it's re-traumatizing and all of that but um that's the hardest thing isn't it is getting the victim to stay willing to give evidence

yeah and that's why the um the ongoing support is really really critical at that point but um yeah it's a challenge for all of us i think at the moment okay and and i will have to say i think it's even more challenging when there are care and support needs that are required particularly uh to achieve um getting the best available evidence um from from people with those needs um and it's making sure they've got the right support be an independent um advocate around their mental health or around their learning disabilities or or anything like that i mean police have access to intermediaries that can assess a victim and the best approaches for achieving that that evidence and what that means which should be done jointly i think with any any professional working with that person so um there are things um certainly that can be improved on uh foundations are there but i think there's a lot uh a lot that needs to be improved deborah you still got your hands up is that another question sorry i was just going to say um regarding around the cps it's still a male dominated career isn't it no i wouldn't say we have as much car if the police certainly have as much contact with female cps lawyers as we do uh male 1 into here no i've just wondered whether sometimes i can put you know a victim off because it's you know a lot of cases where it is males but no if it's averaging that then that's fine that's good thank you i would be concerned if that was um if that was occurring as in um a negative response because of it being a male cps lawyer the same as a male uh police officer but um police officers are going through a difficult time aren't they um at the moment and i think all the kids yeah so yes good luck to them thank you we hope you found that useful we've put quite a lot of links in the chat um and you know so this has been recorded and we will obviously make the slides available thanks Rebecca thank you and i'd just like to say thank you to all the presenters today both for giving up your time but also for providing us all with a really kind of interesting and informative session um i know you've shared your contact details throughout the session if anybody does have any further questions you can either come to me or and i can feel them to the presenters or you can go to the presenters directly as we've said you will receive a copy of the presentation and also an evaluation form um please just take a minute to fill those in it helps us to develop future sessions um so that would be really helpful if you could just send those back to us um just thank you to you all for attending as well hopefully you have found it useful i can see lots of positive comments coming up in the chat which is always brilliant um so thank you for your time and have a good evening thanks all thank you thanks very much everyone bye