Domestic Abuse Bill (Second sitting)

Eleanor Smith Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th October 2019 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Three more Members wish to speak and we have just under 10 minutes, so questions and answers need to be relatively quick.

[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

Q I want to expand on mental health issues. Do you work with child and adolescent mental health services?

Sally Noden: Yes. Actually, over a third of our referrals come from CAMHS, and I also oversee a family support service within Early Help. We work really closely with our CAMHS colleagues, because mental health is a real issue for our young people and for parents.

[Eleanor Smith]

Q I know we have the NHS in the commissioning body, but do you think there should be something for people with mental health issues, particularly children, in the commissioning body?

Sally Noden: Yes, I think so. I do not know whether Eleanor would answer that better than I would.

Eleanor Briggs: We have not done a lot of work on this, to be honest, but we can speak to others and come back to you. I know that Hestia Housing will be appearing before you on Thursday and that they have done a lot of work looking at CAMHS. That is one of their asks, so it might be good to ask them about that.

[Gillian Keegan]

Q It is fascinating to hear all about the services, and the people of Newcastle are obviously very lucky to have them. We heard in other evidence sessions that not having services such as these is often a barrier to women going further to seek out more services, because they do not think their children will get the services required. Do you have a view on how widely available they are across England and Wales? What difference will the role of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner make in ensuring that when she and her team are mapping all these services, it will help to improve the availability of such services across the country for children affected by domestic abuse?

Eleanor Briggs: The research that we did with Stirling University looked at 30 local authorities and at where services were available and where they were not. It varies a lot. In two thirds of local authorities involved in the study, there were some barriers to accessing services. In 10% of areas, there were no support services available. In a third of areas, access to services was restricted by postcode. We know it really varies, which relates to the lack of duty and the instability around funding being an issue.

We really welcome the role of the commissioner, and it is fantastic to see that. We welcome that she has a specific remit on children and that she will have a child advisor as part of her office. We would really like to see children included in the statutory definition, just to strengthen it and ensure that it is absolutely clear. We would also like to see a bit more clarity in the wording—when she looks at the provision of services, it should include children’s services as well, because it could be a real tool if it was absolutely clear that she is going to look at that.