Consign domestic abuse to the hall of shame

I remember the days when drink driving was commonplace - to my shame, I can clearly remember a lifetime ago frequently driving after three pints. Now, my instincts would stop me. Smoking too - it was so normal to smoke in restaurants, pubs, people's houses. Recently we have seen the tolerance of sexual harassment trickle down the drain.

Post Harvey Weinstein and in the midst of celebrating woman's suffrage, can we ride this wave of change and consign domestic abuse to the hall of shame? Scotland is pushing ahead - its parliament is introducing laws creating a new crime of emotional abuse - one stage further forward than the English law of 2015 that outlawed coercive control. Legislation helps, but it is never enough when the problem being tackled is deep-seated and cultural.

We need a public campaign along the lines of #MeToo.

Domestic abuse is much more widespread than most of us realise, especially in Scotland, the North East and the North West. In these areas, a very large proportion of neglect cases that result in child protection plans feature domestic abuse in the story.

Last autumn, we commissioned a new play for secondary schools on child sexual exploitation (CSE), drawing on real cases in the North East. Not long ago, the cultural view was that many CSE victims were at least partly to blame. At the first showing of the play, it was encouraging to see how that had changed, and that the sympathy was all for the young people being sexually exploited. However, In the play, one character is in an abusive peer relationship, suffering at the hands of her violent boyfriend. The mood in the hall was palpably different - why did she not simply leave him? Why did she not report him to the police? To many in the audience the victim was largely to blame. This has to change.

Many areas of the country have been reviewing how they respond to domestic abuse - the focus of joint targeted area inspections has helped. Ofsted found that many areas were effective at supporting victims, but needed to improve services to perpetrators. In many areas the programmes available for perpetrators require attendance over 26 weeks - unrealistic for many of the chaotic men who need them most. Six-week programmes, aimed at low-level offenders, is what we really need.

In the North East, through Operation Encompass, after any incident where a child has been present in a domestic abuse incident, their school is notified the following morning so schools can check they are okay.

Responses from professionals like this are important, but we really need input from the pubs, football clubs, off licences, newspapers, soaps too. Let this be the year we fight back against domestic violence.

• Sir Paul Ennals is independent chair of three local safeguarding children boards