Refuge Against Domestic Violence

• The Domestic Abuse Bill introduces important measures which will help to raise awareness of domestic abuse and will go some way to providing additional support to domestic abuse victims, whilst also helping to challenge perpetrator’s behaviour. It is a positive step in the right direction.
• We support the creation of a statutory definition of domestic abuse, and the inclusion of economic abuse within this. We are also pleased to see that the Bill will place the role of Domestic Abuse Commissioner on a statutory footing.
• Alongside the Bill’s focus on crisis interventions and criminal justice, tackling domestic abuse requires a cross-government response incorporating health, housing and education. We need an equal focus on, and funding for, prevention and early intervention measures that aims to prevent domestic abuse happening in the first place.
• In addition to the measures in the Bill, the Government should provide long-term and sustained investment in early intervention and prevention programmes and wider community-based support. This should include investment in perpetrator programmes, which is why we are calling on the Government to introduce a National Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Strategy. We are also calling for the key learning and best practice from Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) to be shared on a national level.
• This legislation comes at a time when, even prior to the eventual long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, local government’s services, particularly children’s services, were already facing unprecedented demand.
• The Spending Review announcement of £125 million funding to help enable local authorities to deliver the proposed new duty to support domestic abuse victims and their children in safe accommodation is welcome. We now need further detail on this funding as it is not yet clear how the figure has been calculated and whether it will meet the full costs of the new proposed duty.
• The new funding needs to fully account for any increases in demand for services, and any additional burdens identified by local needs assessments when the duty comes into force in April 2021. Children have been added into the statutory definition of domestic abuse, so it will be important to assess whether additional provision is required and therefore whether councils need additional funding to meet the new proposed duty.
• One-off, short term grants do not allow for long-term planning or consistency in service, which is why long-term and sustained investment is needed. Transitional funding is also required to provide support for current domestic abuse services due to close at the end of the next financial year, April 1 2021.

To read yesterday’s full parliamentary debate, moved by Baroness Williams of Trafford, click HERE.

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