Women: Domestic and Mental Abuse

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 5th March 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady King, for securing another debate on this important and, sadly, prevalent issue of domestic abuse. I hope that the Government are aware of the encouraging paradigm shift that is happening right now in domestic abuse services, such that many are now intervening early to prevent many women ending up in refuges. I must, however, stress at the beginning that I understand that the women and children who need the safety that refuges provide have typically somehow survived the most terrifying and sustained attacks on their bodies and personhood imaginable. Until we see the elimination of domestic violence—thankfully, many organisations are working towards that ambition—those safe havens will be needed.

Former hedge fund manager Diana Barran set up the greatly respected organisation Co-ordinated Action against Domestic Abuse, or CAADA. Diana’s starting point then and now is, “What would you want for your best friend?”. Being safe in her own home rather than living in secrecy in a refuge, possibly at the other end of the country, must be the goal if at all possible. CAADA, renamed as Safe Lives, recently concluded that it needs a fresh approach if it is to provide the best help, and it is strongly endorsing a paradigm shift towards early intervention, prevention and a family-based emphasis in domestic abuse work—all without in any way deprioritising safety, hence the new name.

I want to use my time today to draw your Lordships’ attention to how the best available practice in the country is seeking to achieve that shift and how policy can and must support it. My simple point is that intervening early is vital to break the cycle of domestic abuse that so many men and women are caught up in.

Although nothing excuses violence and it is by no means inevitable, childhood exposure to domestic abuse is one of the most powerful predictors of becoming both a perpetrator and a victim as an adult. However, organisations are increasingly grasping the urgency of working across the whole family, with victim, perpetrator and children being helped with all that they are contending with so that they can move on, but with safety of course the top consideration.

Atal Y Fro, for instance, Welsh for Safety in the Vale, was formerly known as the Vale of Glamorgan Women’s Aid. The name change reflects its broader base of working. It has become convinced over years of practice that if it works only with the mother and children, it is just putting a sticking plaster on the problem. It also refers to those using their service as men, women and children, rather than perpetrators and victims, not least to reflect the complexity of what is going on in many households where there is violence.

Many of your Lordships will know that research has revealed a typology of abuse, and that different forms require different solutions. Coercive and controlling abuse, or intimate terrorism, is not the same as situational couple violence, violent resistance or separation-instigated violence. In addition, Professor Murray Straus’s research has made it clear that a surprisingly similar proportion of women and men use violence against their partner, and one in seven men reports being abused by his partner or ex-partner. However, as men are usually stronger than women, they tend to inflict far greater physical harm.

I want to lay out four ways in which we can intervene early and how policy can support this paradigm shift. First, it is imperative that families are helped to build strong parent and child relationships in the early years to lay the foundations for secure relationships throughout life. Children who know that they are loved and cared for and who have learnt valuable interpersonal skills are far less likely to grow up feeling that they need to use violence in relationships or that they will inevitably be on the receiving end. Recent YouGov polling for the Centre for Social Justice found that 73% of the public think that tackling abuse requires acknowledging that perpetrators were often themselves young victims.

Secondly, it is essential that we encourage positive relationships in schools by building supportive school cultures, ensuring that students who need it can access counselling and mentoring services—great examples being Place2Be and Chance UK—and providing effective relationship education. The Government have acknowledged the very high prevalence of adolescents in abusive dating relationships by including 16 and 17 year-olds in the new definition of domestic abuse. Worryingly, patterns set in adolescence can define relationships in adulthood. Voluntary sector programmes such as those run by Love4Life in Loughborough aim to help adolescents develop the skills to enjoy non-violent, equal relationships, increase understanding of domestic abuse, encourage appropriate attitudes and reduce abusive behaviours. The Government should make relationship education mandatory and call it that, and teach the biology of sex, which is already mandatory, separately. Teachers often find relationship education very hard to deliver, so schools should draw in the voluntary sector as its outsider status means it can add real value.

Thirdly, there should also be help for high-conflict and otherwise risky couples going through key transitions such as pregnancy or early years of parenting, or when parents decide to separate. Couple relationship education programmes, as well as the help for parents mentioned earlier, needs to be offered in the community, ideally in family hubs. In its recent report, Fully Committed, the Centre for Social Justice extensively describes how Sure Start children’s centres should be evolved into one-stop shops in every community. These would offer a much wider range of help to parents to tackle the root causes of family breakdown and disadvantage.

Fourthly, prevention of ongoing and future abuse is also taking place where couples are being helped to explore staying together. Increasingly, and very carefully, mainstream service providers are no longer taking the break-up of the abusive relationship as their starting point of help for victims in cases of situational couple violence. However, couple counselling can be positively dangerous in cases of intimate terrorism.

Many people on the receiving end of domestic abuse desperately want to keep the family together but know that that can happen only if the abuse stops. If both partners have a strong desire to work the issues through, and whoever is being violent is taking full responsibility for their actions, therapeutic support can help end that abusive behaviour. It is very important to acknowledge that that may not mean that the couple stay together. Troubled families programmes must include this help for couples, where appropriate, as part of their drive to equip parents to provide safe, stable and nurturing relationships. Again, CSJ/YouGov polling found that three-quarters of the public agreed that services should be available, if they wanted them, to help couples stay together.

Returning to Safety in the Vale, there is much to learn from how to work with a range of organisations in a one-stop shop to help families with medium to low-risk abuse to reshape and restore their lives. Current evidence suggests that it has helped two-thirds of families to stay together safely through a strategy of education, prevention and intervention in the community—EPIC. This involves different evidence-based perpetrator programmes for men and women, a healthy relationships programme in every school in the Vale of Glamorgan, and couples work. The current pilot is largely being paid for through charitable foundations, but once it has proven its effectiveness, the aim is that local authorities can commission it with confidence. Its annual cost is around £83,000 with a conservative estimate of cost savings of around £1.4 million.

Finally, Safety in the Vale is still running a refuge, but it is straining with every sinew to drain away all need for it. Can the Minister please inform me where and how government policy is keeping in step with this promising shift towards early intervention?