Social care alone cannot address domestic abuse
Derren Hayes
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
New Department for Education figures reveal that children's services in England carried out 197,700 child protection assessments where domestic violence was a factor in 2014/15. The figures, published in parliament by Home Office minister Karen Bradley, represent the first time the government has compiled data on the number of domestic abuse concerns referred to, and assessed by, social services. As such, they lift the lid on the scale of the domestic abuse problem and serve to highlight concerns previously raised by children's leaders that councils are struggling to cope with the sheer weight of domestic violence work.
Recorded instances of abuse against women have fallen 20 per cent in the past decade, but over that time, understanding has grown into the links between domestic violence and child abuse and wellbeing. Witnessing domestic violence can seriously traumatise children, so it should be particularly worrying that, according to latest Office for National Statistics figures, a child was present in 46 per cent of instances of partner abuse.
These factors could partly explain why domestic violence is now the most common factor present in child protection assessments by social workers. In 2013/14, it was present in 41 per cent of children in need assessments, but by 2014/15, this had risen to 48 per cent. According to DfE data, domestic abuse now accounts for nearly a quarter of referrals to children's services departments. Greater recognition of the risks posed to children from domestic violence is vital in preventing future physical abuse, injury or worse. So increased referrals to children's services by police and other agencies is in fact an encouraging sign. But the growth in referrals has not been matched by a rise in funding for services to deal with it.
There is also the risk that agencies will become accustomed to referring all instances of domestic violence to children's services, without first filtering out those cases that do not need a child protection assessment and can be dealt with in a different way.
The government has recently given £40m to fund domestic abuse services over the next four years, as well as £2m for charities to develop early intervention support. Bradley has promised that a soon-to-be-published cross-government strategy to tackle violence against women and girls will also set out long-term funding for domestic violence services and support. It is paramount that this strategy looks at ways to invest in prevention services so that struggling families can be helped to tackle problems early and so avoid the need for a child protection referral. Allowing children's services to focus on the most concerning domestic violence cases is important, and swamping them with referrals will only hinder them doing that.
Pressure on budgets and rising numbers of children being taken into care are also likely to mean that the thresholds for children's services intervening in families where domestic violence is present will be raised so that only the most serious cases are acted upon. This illustrates why a government-wide strategy – with significant funding attached – is needed to ensure a range of interventions can be employed when an instance of domestic abuse arises so that problems are prevented from escalating to the point where children are put at risk.
