Independent evaluation of the Expect Respect programme 

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Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, comments:  

“This year marks a decade since coercive and controlling behaviour has been recognised as a crime, and, with the government’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy being published this month, we hope that we will see significant changes over the next decade. 

Coercive control is at the heart of domestic abuse – it is isolating, insidious and confidence-crushing. It makes women feel that they can’t exist outside of their abuser and that everything, including contact with friends and family has to be approved by the abuser. Despite it being a recognised as a crime for a decade, the conviction rates remain stubbornly low, meaning that those responsible can continue this abhorrent crime with impunity. As the government commits to eradicating VAWG, I am hopeful that in the next decade, we will see greater awareness of coercive control, leading to more convictions for this abhorrent crime, as well as greater awareness of it amongst children and young people. It is only by ensuring that young people recognise coercive control and how damaging it is, that we can work towards a world which has no place for it. 

As we work towards creating a society which no longer tolerates domestic abuse, it is vital that those working in the criminal justice system receive training on coercive control, to better understand how dangerous and damaging this behaviour is. It is vital that those working on holding criminals accountable understand what coercive control is, how to recognise it and how to secure convictions for it.”

Natalie Curtis, Survivor Ambassador for Women’s Aid, said:  

“Coercive control is devastating – it leaves survivors feeling ashamed, embarrassed, frightened and unsure. It takes over their whole life. As a survivor, I know these feelings first hand. I fled my abuser and reported the abuse to the police in 2018 and I remember the fear I felt and how difficult it was to live my normal, day-to-day life.  

A decade on, some positive changes have taken place – there is greater awareness and the government has committed to halving violence against women and girls (VAWG), in the next decade, with a strong focus on improving children and young people’s understanding of healthy relationships. Despite this, conviction rates for coercive control remain stubbornly low. For years now, I, along with Women’s Aid, have been calling on better training for all those working in the criminal justice system – the insidious nature of coercive control must be understood and its impact on survivors cannot be underestimated. Only when taken seriously can we hope to improve conviction rates and make sure women are safe from this awful crime.” 

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Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, comments: 

We welcome the government’s ambitious commitment to halving violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the next decade, as outlined in their strategy published today.  

We are pleased to see the emphasis the strategy places on long-term prevention, particularly new investment in programmes that aim to shift attitudes of children and young people, ensuring that they understand what healthy relationships must look like. Our own research tells us that children who were exposed to content like that from Andrew Tate, were five times more likely to view hurting someone physically as acceptable, if they apologised afterwards, so this intervention is absolutely vital. We also welcome much-needed plans to improve local commissioning standards which, for too long, have resulted in a postcode lottery of support for victims and survivors. Looking ahead, it is fundamental that there is a focus not just on setting national expectations – but on ensuring robust implementation and accountability on the ground, so that all women and children experiencing abuse are able to access lifesaving support when they need it most. 

This strategy is a commendable effort by government to deliver a whole system response to VAWG, including through long-awaited interventions in healthcare, which should provide additional resource to complement the vital work being delivered already by specialist services. However, we are mindful that frontline services will experience additional strain following a planned increase in referrals through the NHS, as well as via education and criminal justice systems. It is important that these services are well-equipped to respond, given that over 60% of referrals into refuge are already declined, primarily due to a lack of bedspaces. Additional funding by government into safe accommodation and other specialist services is welcome, but this needs to go much further, including through ring-fenced investment in services run by and for Black and minoritised women and dedicated support for child victims  

While we also acknowledge the government’s efforts to encourage reporting of abuse by migrant victims and survivors, significantly more remains to be done to ensure these most vulnerable victim-survivors are protected and supported, as well as specific funding commitments towards migrant survivors of domestic abuse. The Home Office Flexible Fund, administered by Women’s Aid via our network of specialist services and delivery partners, remains crucial for supporting women, such as those with no recourse to public funds, in times of crisis, and we advocate for sustainable funding for this lifeline. 

Finally, it is critical that through the delivery of this VAWG strategy, the wider expertise and fullest potential of the specialist domestic abuse sector, including the by and for sector, is recognised. Our specialist members already deliver educational work in schools, provide therapeutic services and train of professionals, amongst a myriad of expertise which compliments their role in delivering safe accommodation, as well as frontline and community-based services. We strongly urge that the sector is heavily involved in the funded delivery of these new and vital aspects of the strategy. 

We will now take time to familiarise ourselves with the strategy and consider its impact on our diverse group of member services across England. We will respond more fully in due course.

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Ellie Daniel, Head of Policy and Survivor Services at Women’s Aid, comments:  

“While we have seen positive reforms to the family justice system since the release of the Harm Panel report in 2020, the culture change in family courts has been too slow, leaving countless women and children at risk of harm, their experiences minimised and dismissed.  

“This is why we, along with our sector colleagues, are issuing a collective Statement of Intent, calling on the Judicial College to develop high quality training on domestic and sexual abuse. This should be based on key domestic abuse training principles that we, as a collective, developed alongside survivors. 

“This specialist training will play a vital role in helping the judiciary identify risks of harm and mitigate court-induced trauma for survivors, meaning that the safety of women and children is at the heart of all court decisions. 

“We are also calling on the Government to make resources available to the Judicial College to enable the development and implementation of this training. For too long, abusers have been able to manipulate the court system to continue harming women and children. This must stop now.” 

You can read the Statement of Intent here: Family Court Judicial Training Statement of Intent

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Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, comments: 

“This week, the Ministry of Justice announced a range of reforms to the criminal justice system, as well as much-needed funding for victims’ services. For too long, survivors have been left to muddle through the justice system without adequate support, often without being believed, so these changes are welcome.  

The announcement that £550 million will be invested in victim support services, to be spread over three years, will provide some respite to life-saving services, which have continued delivering high-quality care and support despite a funding crisis. While we await further clarity on the critical question of what proportion of the funding will be ring-fenced for domestic abuse and sexual violence services, and while we would of course like to see further investment in the long-term, this 2% uplift is welcome given the challenging economic context that we are currently in, whilst recognising that costs have increased for many services well beyond this. 

Looking ahead and in the context of this government’s commitment to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade, we continue to urge that  £280 million be committed annually to support these community-based support services, which provide survivors with life-saving help, when they need it most. 

This week, we also saw a number of changes introduced to tackle the backlog of court cases, which is having a detrimental impact on survivors – causing them to drop criminal proceedings due to the damaging impact the delays have on their mental health. A key element of this week’s proposal is the diversion of cases away from court and towards out of court resolutions. We are concerned that the increased responsibility of judicial discretion and on magistrates in domestic abuse cases could mean an increased risk to the safety of women and children due to inconsistent levels of domestic abuse training across judges. Coercive control is an insidious part of domestic abuse and it is vital that judges and magistrates understand its complexity, and the responsibility that they have towards survivors, women and children alike. We urge that specialist domestic abuse training be provided to all judges and magistrates to ensure that decisions are risk-assessed and survivor-focused.  

We are pleased to see further reform, including reforms recommended by the Law Commission which centre the needs of survivors over those who commit heinous crimes against them, accepted by the government. We are pleased to see that it will be enshrined in law that where previous convictions evidencing domestic abuse exist, these can be used at trial for further domestic abuse related offences. We are also pleased to see vital measures introduced to restrict the use of ‘bad character evidence’ against rape victims in court. For too long, survivors of rape have been disbelieved, questioned and undermined, while conviction rates remained stubbornly low. These changes are vital if trust in the justice system is ever to be rebuilt.” 

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Sarah Davidge, Head of Membership, Research and Evaluation at Women’s Aid, comments: 

This week, the Office for National Statistics (ONS), published new figures on domestic abuse. The publication included its analysis of the abuse scales as recommended by the University of Bristol and Women’s Aid, with the aim of providing a better national picture of the prevalence of domestic abuse and to better contextualise the headline prevalence measure which showed that an estimated 2.2 million women and 1.5 million men have experienced domestic abuse in the past year. 

After decades of supporting and working with survivors, we are acutely aware of the challenges that are presented when it comes to measuring the prevalence of this heinous crime. We know that countless survivors will not report their experiences to the police – due to a lack of trust in policing, or feelings of shame – meaning that police data is severely limited. The Office for National Statistics collates domestic abuse data through its Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), which is based on a household survey and does not depend on reporting to the police. This data comes with its own limitations and underplays the gender asymmetry that we know exists in domestic abuse.  

The aim of the abuse scales released this week is to group together different types of victims that experience domestic abuse based on the abusive behaviours and their impacts. For example, the abuse scales show that women experienced significantly higher rates of domestic abuse in Clusters 2 and 3 (which indicate medium and higher numbers of abusive behaviours and impacts) than men. For partner abuse specifically, women were over three times as likely to experience higher numbers of abusive behaviours and impacts – 4.1% of women were grouped as experiencing partner abuse recorded as Cluster 3 compared to 1.3% of men. 

Despite this step forward, this data breakdown still has significant limitations – for example, the scales will only apply to the experiences of abuse from the age of 16, ignoring the experiences of children and young people.  

Whilst the ONS questions ask respondents whether they have experienced domestic abuse in the past year, they do not ask about the impact of this for the same period. The abuse scales instead measure the impact of abuse experienced by victims since the age of 16. It is therefore not possible to differentiate between when the abuse occurred and when these impacts were felt. This means we cannot know whether these impacts are recent, ongoing, or date back many years. We know from our work with survivors that many women experience long-term impacts from domestic abuse, including economic, along with many experiencing post-separation abuse, sometimes for a significant length of time.  

Additionally, whilst the abuse scales account for the number of different abusive behaviours a victim experienced, the frequency of experiencing the same behaviour multiple times is not measured by the survey, apart from for physical abuse. The scales do not make any assessment or comparison of the severity of behaviours or impacts; however, we know that the severity of domestic abuse disproportionately impacts women. The overwhelming majority of domestic homicide victims are female (65.4% or 231 victims) and most perpetrators are male (224 out of 231; 96.97%).1 

The ONS is still finalising the abuse scales methodology as part of its work to redevelop domestic abuse statistics. We urge the ONS to accept all of the recommendations made by the University of Bristol and partners including Women’s Aid, Respect and the College of Policing, and we call on the government to use the abuse scales for a more accurate and detailed measurement of the prevalence of domestic abuse. For too long, domestic abuse has been a crime that hid in plain sight, and it is only by accurately measuring it, and it’s devastating impact, that we can hope to eradicate it once and for all.” 

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Farah Nazeer, chief executive of Women’s Aid, said: 

Despite the pledges made in the Labour government’s election manifesto to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the next decade, we are once again disappointed to see a budget that does not explicitly mention VAWG and domestic abuse.  

If the government is still committed to its manifesto pledge, then investing in the sector that supports survivors and provides lifesaving, frontline services is absolutely essential. For years, successive governments have failed to invest into the VAWG sector in a way that is as sustainable as it is impactful. We have seen powerful, standalone investments that make for positive interventions, yet neglect to provide the ongoing support that victims and survivors urgently need. Without urgent and sustainable investment, local refuges and community-based services simply won’t be able to continue supporting women and children at their point of need, leaving many trapped in life-threatening situations. 

Despite the omission of VAWG from the autumn budget, we are pleased to see that the government has made the decision to scrap the two-child benefit cap, which placed countless children at risk of poverty. This is a shift that has been long-campaigned for by Women’s Aid as well as the wider VAWG sector, as the removal of the cap will allow for more women and children to leave refuges and restart their lives, following the ordeal of abuse. 

We are concerned that the decision to freeze income tax thresholds further exacerbates the lack of financial support women need to escape abuse. Women’s Aid research demonstrates that it can cost a survivor almost £50,000 to flee and ‘stay fled’ from domestic abuse. While the maximum support available from the state is around £40,000, many survivors would not be able to access this full amount. The deficit in financial support is twice as large for survivors who have no recourse to public funds. We continue to call on the government to commit long-term to the Flexible Fund and to carry out an impact assessment of the ‘Budget’s key economic interventions on survivors of domestic abuse to better understand their unique needs. In addition, the introduction of a cap to pension contributions under “salary sacrifice” schemes means that any contributions above the cap would be subject to NI payments by both employees and employers; we are concerned of the impact this could have on specialist services, combined with the rises to minimum wage, on the sector’s ability to retain workers and have financial stability. Once again, we continue to call for funding commitments that match the ambition of the manifesto pledge. Specialist domestic abuse services should be given the funding they urgently need to support women and children as they flee abuse and rebuild their lives in safety.  

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Isabelle Younane, head of external affairs at Women’s Aid, comments:  

“Today’s news that serial rapist and former police officer, David Carrick, has also been found guilty of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl and a former partner, as well as coercive and controlling behaviour, will further damage the trust and confidence that women have in policing.  

“We know from our work with survivors, that women experiencing violence and abuse from a police perpetrator are that much more reluctant to come forward – more must be done to ensure that these crimes are investigated properly and perpetrators are held to account, if this trust is to ever be rebuilt.  

“We urgently need comprehensive changes to vetting, recruitment, misconduct and standards processes within forces to have confidence that they are tackling police perpetrators effectively. We also need the government to hold forces accountable for delivering the urgent reforms to vetting and recruitment called for within the Angiolini Inquiry to ensure that survivors can trust the culture and integrity of policing”. 

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Isabella Lowenthal-Isaacs, policy manager at Women’s Aid, comments:

“While we acknowledge the government’s wider plans for the reorganisation of local government , we would like to express our hope that the specialist knowledge of some Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs), especially when it comes to their understanding of domestic abuse and wider forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG), is not lost.

 

“Sadly, trust in police and the justice system is critically low, and survivors need confidence that their complaints will continue to be taken seriously and that there will be clear accountability for improving police performance. We are also worried that this change could place additional pressure on local authorities, increasing the risk of rushed or poorly informed commissioning decisions – with the greatest cost borne by survivors themselves.

 

“We therefore hope that in the transition process, there will remain dedicated individuals responsible for delivering the government’s ambitious goal of halving VAWG within a decade. We are also keen to understand how this decision will be reflected in the VAWG Strategy, given that a significant proportion of domestic abuse and wider VAWG provision is currently commissioned through Police and Crime Commissioners.”

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