DGBV Mapping Audit Haringey Report - final...DGBV Mapping Audit of Haringey’s Statutory Services !! ! and evaluate as part of performance management. 2. Partners to allocate resources

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DGBV Mapping Audit of Haringey’s Statutory Services


Laura Croom and Bear Montique

FEBRUARY 2014

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary ………………………………………………………………. 3

DGBV in Haringey …………………………………………………………………. 6

Introduction …………………………………………………………………. 6

Key governing documents ………………………………………………… 6

Background in Haringey ……………………………………………………….. 10

Context – DGBV issues and crime ……………………………………… 10 Reviews …………………………………………………………………….. 10

Recent partnership development work ………………………………… 11 Implementing change in Haringey ……………………………………….. 14

Mapping Audit ……………………………………………………………………. 15

Findings – Themes ……………………………………………………………….. 17

Develop shared strategy and objective between partners ……………. 17 Partners identify strategic leads to drive the agenda ………………….. 22

Create accountability to each other ……………………………………… 24 Coordinate response and develop care pathway ………………………. 26

Support for non-specialist frontline staff ………………………………… 30 Build strong links to the good practice & impressive initiatives in place 35

Making Plans ……………………………………………………………………….. 37

The Open Gateway to Services …..………………………………………. 37

The Good Partner …………………………………………………………… 38 Compiled Recommendations ………………………………………………. 40

Appendices ………………………………………………………………………….. 42

1: Mapping Audit Questionnaire …………………………………………… 43

2: Policies and forms seen …………………………………………………. 48 3: Simple mapping grid …………………………………………………….. 49

4: Contributions to strategy ………………………………………………… 54 5: Gaps identified ……………………………………………………………. 60

6: Good practice …………………………………………………………….. 70 7: Agencies contacted ………………………………………………………. 82

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Executive Summary

Introduction The purpose of this mapping process was to capture what individual statutory agencies did now to provide services for domestic and gender based violence (DGBV) and to suggest ways for Haringey to develop its coordinated community response (CCR). Throughout this exercise, we have found Haringey partners engaged, honest and reflective. There were many interesting and strong initiatives underway. Though agencies were not doing all that they would want to, nearly everyone had ideas and plans. With the good practice in place, the personal commitment to this agenda we have seen and the gift of self-reflection, Haringey is well-equipped to create a strong and effective DGBV partnership. We hope this guidance helps to further that work. Process A compilation of specialist services has been created in the borough and we were asked to look at statutory provision. We reviewed the frameworks governing work in Haringey around domestic and gender-based violence and looked at the work done so far, highlighting recent developments and good practice and noting results of previous reviews. We developed a questionnaire to find out about statutory partners’ responses to DGBV and circulated to designated partners. We followed this with interviews with those who had completed the questionnaires to gain more detail. Themes and Recommendations In the course of this exercise, we found several themes emerging and have gathered our evidence, analysis and recommendations under these thematic headings.

Develop shared strategy and objective between partners 1. Broaden the partnership to include the range of agencies necessary for a

coordinated community response to DV and GBV. 2. Agree a CCR policy and protocols, signed off by agency heads, that commit the

partners to being “Good Partners”, as defined on p. 37. 3. Develop the vision of a good partnership response to all strands of DGBV – get

advice from specialists, ask partners to make a plan to improve their agency responses to all the strands of DGBV.

4. Hash out what a DGBV partnership should be able to deliver. Separate out the strands of the GBV response to ensure that it covers all issues.

5. Decide what you are prepared to deliver financially and structurally before opening to consultation and raising expectations.

6. Create a robust accountability mechanism to monitor the above. 7. Support the DGBV Coordinator role by bringing it back into Community Safety and

making it full-time to lead on developing the other GBV strands as well as DV.

Partners identify own strategic leads to drive the agenda through the organisation and into practice

1. Partners to create Leads in their agencies to plan and drive internal processes to meet the partnership’s DGBV strategy. The Lead needs to be senior enough to drive innovation and change across the organisation. Include responsibilities in JD

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and evaluate as part of performance management. 2. Partners to allocate resources to the role of Lead to ensure effective delivery of its

objectives.

Create accountability to each other 1. Working group to address the development of a dataset, advised by commissioners. 2. Create a data set that links one agency to another. Develop baseline data that ties in

with the objectives set and identify gaps to inform partners’ IT development. 3. Create a better understanding of what everyone delivers to the overall effort. 4. All partner agencies to agree what a good frontline response looks like and ask

partners to set up systems to deliver it. 5. Develop better understanding of the outcomes of the specialist services. 6. Create a mechanism by which partners’ efforts can be discussed, challenged and

supported. Provide channels for escalation of concerns. 7. Ask Probation to talk to partners about their restructure and how the new services

might fit into the partnership and what information the partnership might request from them.

Coordinate response and develop care pathways

1. Create a clear care pathway for partners to refer clients to specialists for all strands of DGBV and include neighbouring boroughs. Agree common tools for risk assessment to ensure consistency and to support accurate data collection. Ensure the specialists themselves have referral routes between themselves.

2. Create a new directory of support services, explaining their remits and referral criteria, alongside staff guidance manual on dealing with disclosure and risk assessments. Highlight this in regular training with all frontline staff.

3. Refresh risk assessment training regularly.

Support for non-specialist frontline staff 1. Broaden policies and practice to include all the strands of DGBV and train all public-

facing staff on effective responses. 2. Enlist the help of specialist agencies to develop the frontline response to create a

support service that truly serves its community and so that GBV issues can be brought into the heart of the strategy.

3. Partners to think about and allocate resources: where does money need to be spent and where can changes be integrated into other work or expenditures.

4. All commissioners in partner agencies add DGBV policies to the suite of policies expected in a commissioned service.

5. When looking for funding, think about who benefits and start funding efforts there.

Build strong links to the good practice and impressive initiatives in place 1. Share your plans with partners so they can add value and be a ‘critical friend’. 2. Create opportunities to learn from each other. 3. Look for ways to work together. 4. Look for ways to consult each other about new ways of working or potential

initiatives. 5. Commissioners incorporate DGBV responsibilities into their expectations of non-

specialist as well as specialist services. We have provided a template for a front-line response and for being a Good Partner.

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These will provide a baseline for partners to understand what is required of them and their staff. We then compile the recommendations from this report. Partners may wish to debate over the templates and differ about the priorities, but we hope with these frameworks and through those discussions that Haringey partners will be able to clear some of the brush from the pathway ahead. We thank those who helped us with this audit for their candour, patience and support, and hope they feel that this report reflects their concerns and ambitions.

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DGBV in Haringey

Introduction Haringey’s Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (DGBV) Partnership is working within and to a variety of multi-agency and single-agency frameworks and strategies. They have also undertaken a number of assessments and interventions. Key issues identified through these were the need for domestic and gender-based violence survivors/victims, perpetrators, and children and young people to be identified, to be responded to safely and effectively, and to be referred on to and access specialist support. This all needs to be recorded for data purposes too. This mapping audit is intended to assist in developing an understanding of what statutory agencies are doing now in order to make plans to improve their responses and the work of the partnership.

Key governing documents The key multi-agency frameworks and definitions that Haringey’s response will fit in are identified below with the salient points listed.

Home Office Definition of Domestic Violence and Abuse 2013 Haringey works to the Home Office definition of domestic violence and abuse which includes several Violence against Women and Girls strands. Haringey has decided to highlight those new strands by referring to domestic and gender-based violence (DGBV).

Home Office definition: Any incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive or threatening behaviour, violence or abuse between those aged 16 or over who are or have been intimate partners or family members regardless of gender or sexuality. This can encompass but is not limited to the following types of abuse:

● psychological ● physical ● sexual ● financial ● emotional

Controlling behaviour is: a range of acts designed to make a person subordinate and/or dependent by isolating them from sources of support, exploiting their resources and capacities for personal gain, depriving them of the means needed for independence, resistance and escape and regulating their everyday behaviour.

Coercive behaviour is: an act or a pattern of acts of assault, threats, humiliation and intimidation or other abuse that is used to harm, punish, or frighten their victim.*

*This definition includes so called ‘honour’ based violence, female genital mutilation (FGM) and forced marriage, and is clear that victims are not confined to one gender or ethnic group.

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Community Safety Strategy 2013 – 2017 Outcome Three: Break into the cycle of domestic and gender-based violence (DGBV) by working in partnership to promote healthy and safe relationships Plans:

● Establish a single, strategic commissioning lead for DV ● Improve data collection and agree a robust and meaningful set of performance

indicators ● Improve awareness raising in the community and in schools ● Roll out the IRIS process to GP surgeries. ● Increase the provision of safety planning support for high risk victims ● Increase the uptake of accredited perpetrator programmes ● Develop an understanding of -- and measurements for -- wider gender-based

offences (e.g. FGM, forced marriage, sexual crimes) ●

Outcomes will include: ● 75% of victims will experience a reduction in their risk levels through the IDVA and

MARAC approaches over four years ● A reduction in the number of repeat referrals to the MARAC from 7% to 2% over

four years ● Improved performance management

Commentary: The authors of this report note several challenges here. Awareness raising in schools will require Education and schools to be part of the partnership. The IRIS process has been rejected by GPs (CCG Primary Strategy Group) in Haringey, so another approach will need to be made to include them in the delivery of these targets. As the GPs did not feel that the IRIS process would increase their awareness or be easy to use, it might be worth asking them what they would propose to ensure they are helping their patients to disclose and find safety. To populate the voluntary perpetrator programme, staff across the area will need to be trained so that they can identify perpetrators and respond in a way that engages the perpetrator and does not put themselves or the perpetrator’s victim in danger. This will be challenging. Developing an understanding of GBV is very important and the need is perhaps evidenced by a line in the plan saying. “55% of Hearthstone clients report emotional or so-called honour-based violence”. Conflating these two forms of abuse obscures their differences. We also note that the performance measures are targeted on the high risk cases that appear. By the time someone has become high risk, a great deal of harm has already been done and the recovery is less sure. Working to stop cases escalating to high risk by effective early interventions will be both more effective and therefore less expensive in the short and long-term.

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Corporate Plan 2013 - 2017 Domestic violence appears to sit under Priority 3 in the borough, but there are a number of initiatives in the Corporate Plan that could and should include domestic violence in their delivery. We include them below. Priority 3: Make Haringey one of the safest boroughs in London Initiative to deliver:

● Appoint a single, strategic commissioning lead for domestic violence and appoint additional independent domestic violence advocates

● Complete a mapping project in year one to understand the increase in reported domestic violence incidents across the borough

● Deliver healthy and safe relationship training in schools ● Work with partners to deliver the Community Strategy Partnership action plan to

improve communications, consultation and engagement Priority 4: Safeguarding children and adults from abuse and neglect wherever possible, and deal with it appropriately and effectively where it does occur Initiatives to deliver:

● Implement recommendations from the Munro review ● Ensure that all frontline council staff complete safeguarding training relevant and

proportionate to their role to build confidence in safeguarding awareness and how to report concerns

Priority 6: Reduce health inequalities and improve wellbeing Initiatives to deliver:

● Strengthen our health Schools programme ● Review our current sexual health service offer ● Review the current mental health service offer provided by the statutory and

voluntary sector Priority 10: Ensure that the whole council works in a customer focussed way Priority 11: Get the basics right for everyone Priority 12: Strive for excellent value for money Initiatives to deliver the last 3 priorities for a better council:

● Develop and implement a prevention and early help strategy ● Implement a customer strategy to provide joined up, timely and value for money

services to residents ● Implement the ‘Improving Haringey’ campaign to build staff capacity, and ensure

all our business process and systems: ○ Get the basics right ○ Delivery good value for money ○ Focus on the customer ○ Manage well ○ Make sure that safeguarding is everyone’s business ○ Enhance our commissioning capability through development, training and

embedding commissioning into key transformation programmes Commentary: A number of the priorities listed above will not, on first look, appear to relate to Haringey’s DGBV response but, in a coordinated community response, improvements in the DV response will provide evidence for these other priorities. For instance, the Munro review is about child protection but it highlights the need to ask questions about domestic abuse when a child appears neglected.

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Mayoral Strategy on Violence against Women and Girls 2013-2017 The Five Key Objectives in the strategy are:

1. London taking a global lead to prevent and eliminate VAWG. 2. Improving access to support

3. Addressing health, social and economic consequences of violence 4. Protecting women and girls at risk 5. Getting tougher with perpetrators

Haringey Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) 2012 Key commissioning priorities:

• Development of service for children and young people from families containing

a domestic violence perpetrator, to respond therapeutically to their needs. • Improved response to teenage relationship violence and sexual violence related

to gang activity. • Coordinated and accessible work with perpetrators.

Effectiveness of organisational processes:

• A coordinated approach to collection, sharing, analysis and reporting of domestic and gender based violence across statutory agencies and other relevant groups/partners.

• Establishment of effective, clear and safe response requirements and referral pathways among health and other professionals in contact with potential victims-survivors and perpetrators.

• Easy to find information for victims-survivors and others. Commissioners in all organisations are dealing with a scarcity of resources; greater transparency around commissioning intentions across organisational boundaries against a shared set of key priorities would help to ensure that resources are used wisely and fairly on good quality services to ensure the best outcomes for people who need help. Commentary: These elements to a response are the key ingredients to ensure inter agency accountability and a good quality sustainable approach to a coordinated response. This mapping process is focused on these issues and aims to provide guidance for the way forward for Haringey. Working more closely together within the partnership should enable partners to use resources wisely. Recommendations for further needs assessments, as identified by the JSNA Further information is needed on the effectiveness of routine screening in maternity services, levels of referral and outcomes, with an analysis of local maternity data.

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Commissioners may wish to consider further needs assessments focusing on (including both victims-survivors and perpetrators):

• Forced marriage • Female genital mutilation • ‘Honour’-based violence • Prostitution, trafficking and sexual exploitation • Stalking • Male victims • Older people • People who are LGBT • People with physical and learning disabilities • No recourse to public funds • Sexual violence

Background in Haringey Context -- DGBV issues and crime There are a number of documents that highlight the prevalence of Domestic and Gender Based Violence (DGBV) in Haringey, so we highlight only a few significant statistics here:

● Haringey has an incidence of DV within the borough of 32.8% of all violent crime.

● Reported domestic violence offences increased by 20% compared to the previous year (CSS, p. 8)

● In 2012-13 police recorded 358 sexual offences of which 112 were rape

● At the Whittington FGM service in 2012-13 96 women were recorded to have

undergone FGM

● 2% of all women seen in the antenatal clinic had undergone FGM

● 21% of all cases recorded by the Forced Marriage Unit in 2012 were in London

● Teenage pregnancy data shows that 30% of high risk women had been abused (Family Nurse Partnership data 2012)

Reviews Haringey has worked hard to understand and address the service provision around the issue of DV and recently GBV and to address the needs of victims, perpetrators and family members. Since 2012, Haringey has undergone several reviews to improve their response and services to victims. A JSNA in 2012 that highlighted the need for a more coordinated strategic approach with a structure of policies and pathways within agencies. It also focused on the gaps in services for child survivors living with perpetrators and teenage relationships, gang violence and abuse. The benchmarking of the response to DV by Standing Together in 2012-3 made similar conclusions and highlighted the need for the partnership structure to be reviewed to allow

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for more leadership from a wider group of agencies. It also found that the work tended to focus only on DV and needed to focus more on the wider issues. It concluded that

“There is a very strong sense of commitment to DGBV issues in Haringey however there was little evidence demonstrated, at the time of the visit, of a shared cross partnership objective or mission statement”.

“There is currently a clear disconnect between the operational and strategic work in the borough, which is reflected in the structure of the partnership. While it is acknowledged that the roles of ‘commissioner’ and ‘provider’ are distinct and that protocols and procedures relating to procurement of services need to be followed, it is vital for an effective partnership to ensure that any strategic discussions and the formation of plans are equally shaped by those with the expertise and history of working on DGBV issues from within the local voluntary and community sector.” (Standing Together Benchmarking 2012)

The Haringey partnership further developed the work of building a coordinated response by undertaking reviews of:

• The range and response of specialist domestic and gender based services • The governance structure and partnership working

and now this recent mapping will focus on the direct service response of non-specialist statutory and universal services in providing services to the wider DGBV agenda. In the Haringey Safeguarding Children review, (Child T 2013) relating to a case in 2011, it found that at the time there had been “organisational confusion, lack of interagency communication and language barriers”. These are areas that our mapping found still needed to be improved within agencies. Safeguarding Adults have undergone their own reviews of practice and services and the London multi-agency policy and procedures to safeguard adults from abuse (2011) now includes domestic violence and abuse. Knowing all this and following these investigations, what next for Haringey’s DGBV partners?

Recent partnership development work Many of the responses from the mapping process showed a strong commitment, both financially and strategically, from across the partnership to work towards developing an extensive service response to domestic and gender based violence. These efforts can be gathered under several heads.

Leadership The active involvement of Public Health is a great boon to any DGBV partnership because of their understanding of the interconnectedness of abuse and other forms of social isolation. In Haringey, this is even stronger, with the DGBV Strategic Group being chaired by the Director of Public Health, supported by the Council’s DGBV Strategic Lead. This has had a positive impact on progressing the DGBV workplan. The post of a strategic lead for DGBV within Community Safety was created in April last year after the Standing Together review, and the post holder has made good progress in fulfilling the targets of

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the partnership delivery plan 2013-14. The DGBV partnership have fully restructured their strategic and partnerships groups. This has enabled a wider involvement of key statutory agencies and the voluntary support sector in the strategic vision. Haringey is now in a key position to develop a strong coordinated response across the partners. New leads in DV were being installed at the Whittington Health Trust and at the Middlesex. Whittington Health has scheduled a workshop for key staff across acute and community services to review and map gaps in their services in order to develop strategic thinking for DGBV across the organisation. North Middlesex hospital is developing a Safeguarding Team of senior people to oversee developments across the hospital’s services. Capacity-building There is some excellent capacity building and partnership work emerging across agencies to strengthen service delivery. The HRS Commissioner is commissioning larger and longer contracts to create stability and join up services. The specialist services provision has been expanded in the last year to address the identified need in the reviews. Two domestic violence services were commissioned in 2013: an expansion of the IDVA service for high risk victims referred to MARAC and an expansion of the floating support services. This is in addition to existing services including Hearthstone, Refuge provision, Victim Support and Haringey Women’s Forum. The support services for ‘honour’-based violence, forced marriage and sexual exploitation and violence are few in the borough and though many support services work with these issues as part of their work, the only specialist dedicated support was Pan London apart from Rape Crisis who took self-referrals or agency referrals, with consent, from within Haringey. A team in Children Social Care is dedicated to working with families with no recourse to public funds (NRPF). The council supported a successful funding bid to the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime for an expansion of the IDVA service and the MARAC coordination alongside the mapping process. The bid also included funding to create a perpetrator programme for those accessing drug and alcohol services, starting in 2014-15. Public Health have commissioned a school nurse service delivered by NHS Whittington Health. School nurses have ‘drop in’ clinics in the secondary schools for young people to discuss their concerns confidentially. They also coordinate the borough’s Healthy School programme and ‘developing healthy relationships’ is part of the programme on offer to the schools. A mobile ‘healthy lifestyle’ app for 13 – 17 year olds has been developed by Public Health and this contains a section on healthy relationships. Public Health also leads on ‘teenage pregnancy’. Public Health commissions sexual health services, on behalf of the council, and one of those services is the GUM and CaSH service provided by Whittington Health. They deliver outreach work and one element is a sexual health worker for 6th Form college. All this work could support any future focused work on teenage abuse and sexual exploitation. We also understand that Public Health have recently commissioned a service for children and young people to change attitudes and beliefs to prevent DGBV from happening in the first place and to encourage early help-seeking where it does, although this was not mentioned in the return.

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There is a specialist drug and alcohol and domestic abuse worker employed by HAGA and working with Hearthstone to access and support those suffering domestic abuse with the additional vulnerability of an addiction. Improved provision within agencies The police have restructured processes to improve the police response to non-crimed incidents. Following a MARAC Review, they have improved their referral rates to MARAC. They have a dedicated DCI alongside a DI within the Community Safety Unit to improve arrest and sanctioned detection rates to meet police targets. They are working closely in partnership with Hearthstone to develop clear interagency support pathways. Police are involved in safeguarding work with both adults and children on a number of levels. Children’s Social Care (CSC) have reviewed and developed their response with the appointment of a DV Senior Practitioner and a recent DV early help worker appointment. The borough’s dedicated DGBV coordinator is based within the CSC team. Teenage partner abuse guidance and training was rolled out to all social care staff 3 years ago and DV is the focus of practice development workshops for staff. CSC have continued to develop their partnership links with a workflow agreed between the SOVA Team and the MASH for any cases of concern to be discussed. We were unable to capture all of the work of Children’s and Young People’s Services as the audit return did not cover Early years, YOS or Education. The maternity unit at the North Middlesex Hospital is developing a red dot system to enable women attending the unit to indicate that they are suffering abuse so that staff can arrange a safe place to talk. North Middlesex Hospital are also developing screening in their Emergency Department (ED). The mandatory DGBV training that midwives get will soon be rolled out to ED staff. The Fire Service is hoping to develop DGBV training for all their operational staff. North Middlesex Hospital also has a new IT system that will enable them to collect data and to follow referrals to social care and will help them reflect on their practice. Drugs and alcohol services have just started recording the results of their routine screening for all women entering their services. Commissioners want to quantify the extent of domestic abuse amongst their service users. A new case management system in DASH includes information on domestic violence, whether the client is a victim or perpetrator. They will be able to capture more information about domestic violence to feed into service development and into training needs. Joint working Safeguarding have improved links with the partnership and have representation on the DGBV strategic board. They have continued to consolidate safeguarding partnerships with NHS colleagues and GPs. All local health partners are represented on the Safeguarding Adults Board (SAB). Whittington Health Trust, the North Middlesex Hospital Trust and Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust have their own safeguarding adults at risk committees. There is good communication between these boards and the SAB, assisted by each health agency having a safeguarding adults lead. It will be important for safeguarding partners to ensure that DGBV responses are integrated throughout their work and that these boards link closely to the DGBV partnership.

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The police manager of the police public protection desk chairs the Haringey MARAC and the DCI is a member of the strategic group. Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust have developed a Domestic Violence and Abuse Protocol jointly with Safeguarding Children and a Domestic Violence fact sheet and flowchart have been developed for each borough in the Trust. The Safeguarding Adult updated information has been put up on the new Trust Website. A bespoke Safeguarding Adult training was undertaken and delivered to managers and staff in the Forensic service. Case File Audits on Meridian have also been carried out as part of a quality assurance measure. The MARAC review has highlighted areas of work around referral numbers and agency representation which are being addressed by the partnership. Building on all this good work and developing strong partnership links between the initiatives will be crucial in the next year to obtain the coordinated response wanted. Gaps in specialist provision There are still gaps in the specialist service provision locally identified by the DGBV Strategic Lead and this effort:

● community-based, voluntary programme for domestic violence perpetrators ● therapeutic service for children and young people (including working in parallel

with the non-abusive parent to repair child-parent relationships) affected by domestic violence

● on-going, long-term i.e. post crisis / case work and services supporting the recovering of DGBV survivors, assisting them with rebuilding their lives (e.g. group work/workshops, drop-in)

● Specialist services for gender based violence ● Service provision for victims, perpetrators and children whose first language is not

English ● Specialist services for teenage relationship or gang abuse, sexual violence and

exploitation ● Education and awareness raising within agencies and the Community

Implementing change in Haringey Haringey is a very diverse borough. The population is estimated to be 225,000 and almost half of the population is from ethnic minority backgrounds, with around 200 languages spoken in the borough. Haringey’s population is the fifth most ethnically diverse in the country. The borough ranks as one of the most deprived in the country with pockets of extreme deprivation in the east. Implementing any change within Haringey services has to take into consideration the context it will work within, paying attention to the impact initiating change will have on staff constraints, capacity of agencies to deal with new ways of working and most importantly sustainable funding. Any development work towards the coordinated response has to be done in consultation with both voluntary and statutory agencies, with a clear commitment and understanding between the partners of the objectives agreed. If each partner’s responsibility to the bigger aim is understood individually and filtered down into front line practice, the coordinated response will have a higher chance of sustainability and success.

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“The right thing to do and the hard thing to do are usually the same.” Steve Maraboli, author

Haringey has undergone some severe strategic and financial challenges in recent years, with many changes within the statutory agencies. Levels of staffing in Haringey, as in all boroughs, have undergone cuts and restructuring. Many key senior posts are interim and some had been in post for short periods at the time of this mapping. CSC particularly have seen many changes of directors in the last 5 years. The high turnover also of middle management and general staff has caused problems of continuity and quality of service. Several staff we spoke to within CSC resigned during this mapping process. Some staff felt reduction within teams and hot desking arrangements with stressful workloads affected their ability to provide a quality service. During the audit, staff interviewed reported that there had been many consultants carrying out reviews recently. There was some cynicism amongst staff about the results of those efforts, as the follow-through was weak and therefore few practices had actually been improved permanently.

“Way too many consultants and things aren’t seen through. Consultancy work not

linking up. Nothing flows from the work with consultants and sometimes the consultant work doesn’t reflect what is actually happening. Team is very committed and capable, and does a good job.” (CSC interview)

“Insensitivity of senior staff to ask for this constant work with consultants. Momentum when things change and then it peters out and the frontline are left not

knowing what the new process should be”. (CSC interview) Against this is the fact that a number of the new senior people we spoke to had come from other boroughs and had a wealth of experience. Having newly arrived in post, they were positive about making a difference and making changes to improve practice. Their expertise and willingness to engage in the issues are very positive for Haringey. Although this is a climate of austerity it is also a time of possibility and the positive input of new leaders is a rich basis on which to develop a gold standard coordinated response.

Mapping Audit Process This process we undertook to deliver on this contract had four steps:

1. The questionnaire. We devised a 20-question audit questionnaire. A number of key fields were supplied as part of the bid. (This simplified form is in Appendix 3.) We added additional fields to provide a fuller understanding of what agencies were doing. (The questionnaire is in Appendix 1.)

2. Identifying leads. The questionnaires were initially sent to the strategic leaders in the key partner agencies as identified by the DGBV Strategic Lead within Community Safety. Tracking down the appropriate person to complete the questionnaire was, in some cases, a challenge. In a number of agencies, there were different DGBV responses in different parts of the organisation so finding a single person who could speak for the whole organisation was problematic. We found that in some organisations, this role was in transition. For others, it only became clear that we had the wrong person after we had interviewed them and so the search began again.

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3. The interview. Having received basic answers to the questionnaire, we then undertook interviews with the respondents to flesh out their agencies’ response. These were usually about an hour long.

4. Finalising answers. Additional information gathered through the interviews was added to the questionnaires and then returned to the contacts for their approval, correction, or additions. For agencies where this final step was not possible, we have supplied the post-interview questionnaire with the additions in blue so that it is clear which aspects of the answers did not get final approval.

Partners interviewed For some organisations we spoke to several people, for others, we spoke to one. We were guided in this by the individuals within the organisations. We made several efforts to talk to a wider partnership (for instance, Citizens Advice Bureau), but we received no response and therefore focussed on the agencies that had been prioritised for us. We would like to thank those who we spoke to for their open and honest answers and their continued support with this as the questionnaire went back and forth for approval. We hope that respondents feel that this report is faithful to their candour and their ambition. The list of agencies and organisations completing questionnaires and/or interviewed: • Metropolitan Police Service, Haringey

Borough • London Probation Trust -- Haringey • London Fire Service • Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental

Health Trust (BEH MHT) • Drugs and Alcohol Strategy Manager

(commissioner) • Drugs Advisory Service Haringey

(DASH) • Haringey Advisory Group on Alcohol

(HAGA) and Cosmic • Whittington Health Trust • North Middlesex Hospital Trust • London Borough of Haringey’s

Community Housing Services • Library • Homes for Haringey • London Borough of Haringey’s

Housing Related Support (commissioner)

• Haringey Clinical Commissioning Group (commissioner)

• Children and Young Peoples Service • Community Safety Strategic Lead

(commissioner) • Integrated Offender Management • Anti-social Behaviour Team • Direct Services • Front Line • Asset Management • Public Health (commissioner) • Safeguarding Adults • School Nurse Service • Registrar Services • College of Haringey and North East

London

Processing the answers Populating the initial grid (Appendix 3) with simplified answers was problematic. For instance, respondents would tell us that GBV issues were covered in their Safeguarding Policies. We have no doubt that their Safeguarding Policies could and would be used for this, but we note that naming an issue helps to refine the response. We also know that when staff turn to policies for guidance, they often want specific advice, particularly if they have no or little experience of that issue. So, when determining whether an agency did or did not have specific responses for the purposes of populating the simplified grid included here, we took a narrow view with the hope/expectation that it would encourage agency leads to question, review and strengthen their responses.

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Similarly, there were a variety of responses to whether an agency had a training plan. For some agencies DV training was mandatory, for others it was voluntary. We could not judge the quality of that training through this exercise. Some agencies only provided training for the managers and not all staff. Some included GBV in their definition of DV and others did not. So we have provided the simplified table in this report, but have provided a spread sheet of the full answers to the questionnaire separately to the DGBV Strategic Lead within Community Safety – and thence to the partnership. The length and detail of it make it impossible to include in this document.

Findings – Themes Haringey has in recent years expanded to include wider Gender Based Violence (GBV) issues within its DV responses. There is a strong history of good practice and partnership working between the voluntary and statutory services. There are big challenges ahead for Haringey to meet the scale of provision especially during a time of financial constraints. DGBV presents itself across all agencies and not just in the specialist services. Haringey needs now to expand and develop its response so any agency can confidently respond to victims and perpetrators and see it as core business as is child protection. This means that all agencies have to do their bit and be responsible for earlier intervention, signposting, referral and support. Provision of specialist services in a range of languages will continue to be an issue as migration and movement of people within the borough grows. The good practice identified in this mapping process has no clear link yet into a coordinated response and needs input of dedicated strong leadership from the top to drive the agenda, change practices and develop policies and attitudes within agencies. The value of multi-agency working for a victim of DV was demonstrated in Safety in Numbers1 (2009) findings. This showed that domestic violence clients accessed a number of forms of support. It also showed that those clients accessing more forms of support were more likely to feel safer and were more likely to have their risk reduced. It is likely that the same is true for victims of other forms of GBV as well. This time of change within local health structures, the formation of the CCG and local authority restructures is also an ideal time for Haringey to introduce practice changes and set down their baselines for their vision of a gold standard response.

Develop shared strategy and objective between partners

Responses We asked about agencies’ strategic plans that linked to the corporate or community safety plans. The answers to question 12 are in Appendix 4. Either there were no links or there were links that the respondents did not know about. No one was specific, that they were delivering a particular response in order to contribute to a particular objective.

1 http://www.caada.org.uk/policy/Safety_in_Numbers_full_report.pdf

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Not all agencies or interviewees acknowledged the connection or a commitment to deliver in this realm. The Haringey CCG said that GPs will need to be convinced – as evidenced by their decision not to introduce the IRIS project. Some agencies returned incomplete audits as they did not associate their work with any DGBV prevention, detection, or information on support services. One agency returned an incomplete audit saying they would have little to add despite having a large teenage population that used their services. All these agencies came into contact with the public on a regular basis. Only the Public Health commissioner spoke about commissioning through the DGBV Strategic Group (though these structures are relatively new). The partnership agreed to call itself a domestic and gender-based violence (DGBV) partnership in order to bring the GBV issues into more prominence. Despite this, we found that almost all those interviewed reported that they had yet to think through and incorporate effective responses to forms of GBV outside domestic violence. Their responses had yet to evolve to include GBV, nor were there any specific plans in place to do so. They knew it was a weakness. The hospitals’ new leads were DV leads; police and probation acknowledged that they could do better on GBV. Partners often had DV policies in place but most interviewees said that GBV issues would be covered by their safeguarding policies. So though it was agreed that highlighting GBV issues in the name of the partnership was important, that understanding had not made its way into partner agencies’ job descriptions, understandings and policies. Similarly, the role of the DGBV coordinator appears not to have evolved either. The DGBV coordinator was based within CSC but it was unclear to us whether she only worked to CSC priorities or to the borough partnership agenda. Her work focus was mainly on DV with no evidence in the audit or interviews of any wider GBV delivery work. Her post was for 18 hours a week and she was responsible to two managers, one who resigned during our mapping. The partnership should consider how this role can be used to deliver the wider DGBV future plans and where it is best placed within the council. The CSC pathway received was for domestic violence victim support services and the referral information sheet for Hearthstone only mentioned support for DV. The manager for the Safeguarding Adults team used to sit on the strategic group, the operational group, MARAC and the MARAC steering group. Now this work is carried by a variety of people: the Deputy Director is on the strategic group, and Head of Service on the MARAC steering group, and an Adult Team manager on the MARAC. By spreading the responsibility, the agency is looking to highlight DGBV at different levels and embed changes in practice throughout. Since April 2013, sexual health clinics have been commissioned by Public Health and clients are referred from there to Haven, the sexual assault referral centre. There was little other reference to sexual violence services from partners, either in the responses we received or in the discussions we had. The policies and pathways referred to and sent also tended to reflected this. The partnership is using the Home Office definition of domestic abuse that explicitly states that it starts with 16-year-olds. Yet colleges and Education were not core partners in the delivery of a DGBV response in Haringey. They do not sit on the DGBV Strategic Group or the Partnership Network. Education is a crucial missing link in the strategic work of awareness, healthy relationship and early interventions. Youth Offending is another area that needs to be involved as agencies deal with younger client groups with the awareness of gang violence and sexual exploitation developing.

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There is a growing awareness of the lack of response to perpetrators. This is a national trend. BEH MHT, Probation, Community Housing Services, IOM, hospital maternity departments, and drugs and alcohol teams all acknowledge that they come into contact with perpetrators and there is growing unease that they do not know how to address this safely and effectively yet. The BEH MHT acknowledges that they have a higher incidence of perpetrators of DV within their service user group and therefore outlines how they will work with service users who are also perpetrators.

Analysis

Who are the partners? To provide a reliable and consistent response to DGBV across the borough, Haringey should start with the ambition of developing a wider partnership on all the boards to include services and organisations that do not come under the umbrella of the local council. So the partnership should include specialist DGBV voluntary agencies, community services, education, mental health (community-based) and other health agencies (acute and community) in addition to the police, housing, safeguarding and community safety. The strategic group should look at how expertise on the wider gender-based violence issues will be brought into the strategic plans and into the heart of the DGBV structures and decision-making. The expertise of the voluntary sector should be utilised at a strategic level as well as advisory level. The range of agencies that should be involved – to create equality of voice and responsibility – would include voluntary, statutory, publicly-funded and charitable organisations, specialists and generalists. All these voices will need to have routes to the strategic group. The Haringey Sixth Form centre and the College of Haringey and NEL were asked to complete audits. Despite Public Health’s good work in developing services for young people around relationships and teenage pregnancy, these audit returns were poor. We received 1 response that showed little understanding of their crucial role in awareness, prevention or support. The response from Children’s Social Care also did not include the wider view of Education or Early Years. The widening of the DV definition to include 16 year olds means that agencies that come into daily contact with young people will have to look at developing their response beyond a referral for child protection. Teenage Relationship Abuse TRA is seen as a growing issue that agencies need to address, as is sexual exploitation and gang violence amongst young people. Child-to-parent abuse also needs input and closer working relationships between Education, Safeguarding children and MARAC. Teachers and school nurses are in a unique pastoral relationship with individual pupils that gives them opportunities to help students address all kinds of abuse. There is growing awareness in schools of the need to develop their approaches to forced marriages and FGM. The GBV issues of sexual violence and exploitation, ‘honour’-based violence and forced marriage are not represented strongly within the partnership structures or statutory agencies, leaving the voluntary sector as the only specialist voice. A focus on the wider GBV issues requires greater awareness of the issues and a developing expertise through research and training within agencies that can then be brought into the partnership. It should not just be up to the voluntary specialist agencies to raise these additional

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emerging subjects within the partnership. The DV and few DGBV leads within the borough should be supported in their role and have feedback mechanisms within their wider organisation to truly speak at partnership meetings on behalf of their services. DV leads within a health setting often report their frustration at being the only health representative at a meeting and then being held responsible for responses and systems of other health services that they have no knowledge of or power to influence. It would be beneficial to the partnership to explore ways of pulling health agencies closer. A task and finish subgroup could investigate this and feed back into the strategic group. As part of the reconsideration of who Haringey’s partners are, the huge variety of the population needs to be considered so that the responses and support services reflect the diverse nature of the borough and ALL citizens have a route to services.

Shared objective To create a shared objective, all agencies need to take responsibility for their part in delivering a coordinated response and commit time to developing their agency’s individual part in the wider strategy. This is especially true for those agencies whose core work is not DGBV focused but will still come into contact with survivors. Many of the people we spoke to were committed to addressing DGBV and reported that their agencies were as well, but we found little shared objective between the agencies. There was no shared vision across agencies of what a gold standard coordinated response should look like in practice, nor what was required in addition to incorporate GBV responses. The role of the DGBV Coordinator has evolved in terms of title, but time has not been allocated to address these myriad new strands.

“Everyone is set in their own process.” (Police audit return 2014) Instead agencies worked within their own remit and strong partnerships responses across agencies were lacking, apart from the MARAC. Where agencies’ core work was not DGBV, staff had no further communication or responsibility for a client after they were referred on. This could lead to victims falling through the support network as not all victims will follow through on sign-posting or a referral. At present there is no way to track this.

“Think about the conversation as the start of a process rather than as a one-off event.” (BEH MHT DV&A Protocol)

Other agencies, for example the BEH MHT, recognise that there is a higher incidence of both victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse in their secondary care service users and therefore have a detailed protocol around this. Most tellingly, agencies do not see the DGBV partnership as a delivery mechanism. Apart from Public Health, partners did not link their work to the strategic plans (Corporate or Community Safety) and did not think about commissioning through the partnership. Their efforts were focussed within their agency, with some joint working. Their responses did not suggest that they saw the added value of working through the partnership.

Overarching strategy Some agencies were under the impression that the previous DV strategy was the actual DV policy for the council and there was some confusion around whether Council policies

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did exist. There is, at present, no clear domestic and gender-based violence strategy from the top showing joint responsibility and coordination across all partner agencies for delivering services to victims, from first crisis response to safety. The Community Safety strategy includes addressing DGBV, but there are a number of partners that are needed to deliver a DGBV strategy that would not see either the Council’s or the Community Safety strategy as pertaining to them. By placing the DGBV strategy within these other larger strategies, the vision is narrowed and not all partners’ responsibilities are included. Ideally, a separate DGBV strategy would link to these strategies and to the priorities and action plans of the other strategic boards. Across the agencies we found no clear shared philosophy or understanding of what DGBV was, nor of the complexities of dealing with it within a service. Agencies whose core was not focused on delivering DGBV services tended to think primarily about this agenda as domestic abuse and how it relates to safeguarding children. The Safeguarding Adults remit also does not fit into most DGBV cases unless the victim has additional vulnerabilities of disabilities, mental health or learning disabilities. All the strands of DGBV must be named in practice and policy to create a focus and strategy within an organisation.

“It may be worth considering an overarching policy along the lines of the Lambeth Violence Against Women and Girls policy. Lambeth has high incidence levels in indicators for gender-related needs, sexual health and crime etc. and has developed a strategy to address this holistically within Lambeth services.” (Housing Related Support Commissioner audit return 2014)

Recommendations 1. Broaden the partnership to include the range of agencies necessary for a coordinated

community response to DV and GBV. 2. Agree a CCR policy and protocols, signed off by agency heads, that commits the

partners to being “Good Partners”, as defined on p. 37. 3. Develop the vision of a good partnership response to all strands of DGBV – get advice

from specialists, ask partners to make a plan to improve their agency responses to all the strands of DGBV.



6. Create a robust accountability mechanism to monitor the above. 7. Support the DGBV Coordinator role by bringing it back to Community Safety and


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“The only way to predict the future is to have the power to shape it.” Eric Hoffer, philosopher

Responses Although this mapping audit was targeted at senior management and directors, very few undertook to complete the questionnaire, delegating down the organisation and, in some cases, initially to staff who did not have the strategic knowledge of the working practices of the agency, the authority to speak for the whole agency, or to someone who had little understanding of this agenda. A few agencies outside the current partnership said that they would like to work with the partnership, or they would be happy to display information provided. Coupled with the need for the partnership to invite a wide range of agencies and organisations, is the need for agencies to be proactive in asking for more involvement and working with the partnership to create joined-up responses and materials. This requires leadership. Several organisations required a number of people to complete the questionnaire and several people to review it, so that it is unclear where the ultimate responsibility for this lies. Some agencies had a lead person for DV only. The JD of some leads did not include their DGBV role or reflect time or resources to commit to this agenda. These leads were not always supported in this role by their management, colleagues, processes or policies. Their ability to initiate change to practice or policy was limited, as no time or power had been allocated to this work. Often the leads were able to develop practice, but only within a particular department or at the delivery point. In those agencies that did not have a lead, it was unclear who was responsible for driving the issue within the organisation. Few agencies within Haringey had performance management targets around delivery of the role apart from the dedicated DGBV strategic post within the council. Several respondents identified financial resources as a constraint, noting that they would like to provide wider training or gather data. One respondent reported that, despite her lobbying, a newly installed IT system did not have the fields to collect the information that she wanted for DGBV responses. It is worth noting that the loss of provision in one agency will affect partners. In the return for North Middlesex Hospital, staff report that Solace used to be in the A&E, but that Solace lost funding for this. They then identified that the loss of Solace in A&E meant that the hospital staff lost some training, the ability to consult with specialists when needed, and the visibility of DGBV within their work that having the specialist there improved. Few agencies reported that they had human resources policies that covered the situation where a staff member was suffering or perpetrating DGBV. For those that said they did, the policy often specifically covered other personal crises, such as an ill child or parent,

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but did not address issues that would be relevant in the context of domestic abuse. Policies relating to perpetrators were focussed on a staff member being abusive in the course of their work. The HR policy within the council is old and ready for review. Many agencies did not even know there was one. We were unable to track down a copy to review as respondents did not know where it was filed on the council system. Analysis Having a Lead in an agency with the time and authority to change processes and policies and embed them is key to delivering a partnership response to DGBV. The commitment needs to start with the Director/CEO and run down through the organisation with the Lead delivering the drive. The ambition for such a post is seen in the Whittington’s response:

Two-year post for DV lead within Whittington Health: ‘ . . . will have a strategic responsibility for delivering a response to domestic abuse, it will be that person’s responsibility to drive changes that are necessary to training, policies, procedures, structures and practice on the frontline that keeps victims safe by taking control away from the perpetrators and allowing the victims to feel safe enough to disclose.’ (Whittington Health Trust audit return 2014)

The commitment and leadership will be seen in the new Safeguarding Team at the North Middlesex that includes senior people and will be able to create a consistent and Trust-wide approach to DGBV. One of the challenges for this group will be to keep their definition of safeguarding broad enough to include those suffering domestic abuse who do not have vulnerabilities as identified in legislation. The identification of a lead or specialist within an agency is not the complete answer to developing strategic drive within an agency, however. To deliver an appropriate response, agencies will need to allocate resources for it. This includes time for the Lead to carry out those responsibilities, time and money for training and publicity materials, space and time for frontline workers to identify and respond to those suffering (not all victims will want to be referred), commitment to prepare for and attend meetings, and to work with partners to develop new and joint initiatives. It should be noted that the Whittington post above is externally funded (not from Haringey) and time-limited. The partnership needs to find appropriate mechanisms for agencies to be able to share new initiatives and let each know about changes in practice or service delivery. A reality of domestic and gender-based violence is that it does not just happen to ‘them’, to members of the public accessing services. It also happens to staff. For agencies relying on HR policies not designed to cover DGBV, they may find that they do not have the flexibility they need to keep staff safe. The HR policy may simply allow staff to have time off to deal with a crisis. But, for victims of abuse, the workplace may be their only safe place, so time off leaves them more vulnerable. Partners need to review their policies to ensure that their HR policies specifically and effectively address the situation of staff as victims or perpetrators of abuse inside and outside their workplace. As several interviewees suggested, it may be that organisations need to prioritise this work for a period, highlighting it regularly to incorporate it into everyday thinking. By this route,

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DGBV issues may be incorporated into plans, policies and practice, in the DNA of partner agencies’ way of doing things. Commissioners can also help with this by including a policy on DGBV, as well as an HR policy that includes it, in the suite of policies that commissioned services must have.

“Would help if there were targets around this so that the system would be required to deliver.” (Whittington Health Trust audit return 2014)

Recommendations

1. Partners to create Leads in their agencies to plan and drive internal processes to meet the partnership’s DGBV strategy. The Lead needs to be senior enough to drive innovation and change across the organisation. Include responsibilities in JD and evaluate as part of performance management.

2. Partners to allocate resources to the role of Lead to ensure effective delivery of its objectives.

Create accountability to each other

Responses The questionnaires were focussed on agencies’ own response, but several questions were asked about sharing information, data and good practice. The responses tended to be brief, showing most sharing was done vertically, i.e. within their own organisations. A benefit of this sort of external audit is that it compiles partner agency information. We invite partners to read the Development Section (above) and The Good Practice Appendix 6 to see what other agencies are doing – to share their own efforts and to learn from others. Learning from others saves time and money. We found little evidence of partners being held to account by other agencies. We found that some partners expressed concern about specialist services (Hearthstone) not being ‘as good as they used to be’, but no discussion as a partnership to find out what the issues are and problem-solve. Conversely, Community Housing Services understood there are concerns, yet there was no mechanism – or it was not employed – to address this. Some agencies said that they had data, but were not asked to share it with the partnership.

“Probation would welcome some accountability mechanism to the wider community safety partnership. This will be particularly important after Probation is broken up and private contractors are working with some offenders.” (Probation audit return 2014)

Some agencies audited (for example, police, drug and alcohol, Community Housing Services, probation, BEH MHT) collected data on DV and none on the wider DGBV strands and fewer still reported them back to the partnership on a regular basis. Some information was gathered but this was shared vertically within agencies. There was no evidence of data collection or sharing on a useful partnership planning level. Agencies tended to share data for their own work and case management but not in a way that would benefit any coordination of services.

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“New case management system will allow us to collect data on both victims and perpetrators of Domestic Violence which will feed into service development and training needs for staff.” (DASH audit return 2014)

No one reported an effort to track information through the care pathway, for example, identifying the number of people signposted to a specialist agency versus the number that accessed that service and identified that referring agency. IOM shared data multi-agency for case management within its own work stream only. Some agencies sent data to central quality assurance. We understand that commissioned services reported to their funders.

“Quarterly performance reports are shared with the Safeguarding Adults Team Manager and Senior Leadership Team showing DV offences by ward/identifying hotspots. The Domestic Violence maps are only intended for relevant Council workers, and are not distributed to the public or wider” (Safeguarding Adults audit return 2014)

We understand that MASH data gives knowledge about where DV is happening in boroughs and looking to develop resources in that area. During a data exercise in July 2013 (Haringey Stat) found that Safeguarding Adults had 151 cases referred to adult protection team with a DV element.

“537 referrals raised to Adult Protection Team in 2012/13. Of these, 151 cases (28%) were DV (based on analysis of abuse type and alleged perpetrator).” (July 2013 Community Safety and Business Intelligence Teams Haringey Council)

This is important intelligence for the strategic plans of the organisation and is useful information to share with partners. Safeguarding are now looking at screening for domestic violence and adding the collection of this data to their monitoring. Analysis The collection of data from across all agencies around DGBV is important to enable informed strategic decisions around scale of provision and funding. One of the key criteria for building in accountability across the partnership is a willingness to share data, analyse it and look at the successes and areas for development. The partnership has yet to create a dashboard of indicators that will help it monitor and evaluate its effectiveness across all partners’ activities. This is a vital lever in partnership work and should be developed. As an example of how shared data might be used, the 151 referrals to Adult Safeguarding identified by the data exercise highlighted the high number of cases with a DV element. This data could be used to look at the referral pathways for adults at risk and develop the earlier support services for intervention. The dataset should be developed from what agencies already have and what partners want to know. This dataset will evolve as IT systems develop, more information is available, and the partnership becomes more sophisticated in its analysis. Where systems cannot provide data currently, partners need to identify what information they want so that it becomes part of the IT development specifications in their organisations. Partners will need to identify resources to collect and analyse the data collected.

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Soon, the partnership will need to address the changes in Probation by determining what they want from the newly formed London Community Rehabilitation Programme and how they can link in their data and services to the partnership. Data collection can also be linked into and contribute towards the wider targets within the council around Community Safety, Criminal Justice and Public Health.

“Would like to develop systematic reporting information with others on the needs, referrals and assessment and move through timescales and outcomes.” (HRS Commissioner audit return 2014) “If there were an overarching policy, I imagine that governance would be through the DVSG and DV Directors Board, linking into Community Safety and other partnership boards; with implementation reviewed in the practitioner group.” HRS Commissioner audit return 2014)

The partnership needs to create accountability mechanisms through its structures. Concerns raised about Hearthstone (above), might be raised at the Partnership Network meeting by agencies that had complaints. The complaints could then be addressed to determine whether the problem lay in the expectations or in the delivery. It may be that partners needs more or different information from specialist providers to be able to monitor and be reassured of the service that is being delivered. The information that flows through the partnership structures is its lifeblood. Concerns about partner’s activities should be raised, addressed, and escalated, as needed, for resolution. Recommendations

1. Working group to address the development of a dataset, advised by commissioners. 2. Create a data set that links one agency to another. Develop baseline data that ties in

with the objectives set and identify gaps to inform partners’ IT development. 3. Create a better understanding of what everyone delivers to the overall effort,

perhaps through training day where strategic and voluntary partners explain their services to each other and all the work is mapped against each other.

4. All partner agencies to agree what a good frontline response looks like and ask partners to set up systems to deliver it.

5. Develop better understanding of the outcomes of the specialist services, for example: is risk reduced, are clients engaged with other agencies, and were injunctions obtained?

6. Create a mechanism by which partners’ efforts can be discussed, challenged and supported. Provide channels for escalation of concerns.

7. Ask Probation to talk to partners about their restructure and how the new services might fit into the partnership and what information the partnership might request from them.

Coordinate response and develop care pathways Responses Care pathways As with the policies, the care pathways seen are mostly focussed on domestic violence. For DV, some agencies referred to Hearthstone, some to Solace, without any real

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explanation of why one rather than another. The few care pathways that we have seen were designed to show the progress of a referral within the partner agency rather than to the appropriate external agency. The internal information was very helpful, but several respondents said that they looked up local specialist organisations on Google. In discussions with respondents, we also understood that there was a lack of agreement about what Haringey’s care pathway was for victims of domestic violence and that the work of the specialist agencies themselves were not very well understood or coordinated between themselves.

Relevant policies are held within the partner agency systems with no Offender Management Unit specific policies which is an identified gap in provision. All of these issues would need to be covered by a comprehensive partnership agency policy/procedure/referral system which would dictate how to identify and respond effectively. (IOM audit return 2014)

Access to most statutory services is through an assessment process. Once someone is assessed as suitable for a service, then they might be screened for DGBV. Therefore screening is reliant on the victim at point of contact fulfilling the criteria of the service. Victims will approach a variety of non-specialist services, presenting with other issues where DGBV may be disclosed during the visit. There is still a need for independent support services for those victims that do not want to or fit into a statutory framework or who do not have the need for statutory services. Specialist services There was little understanding of what support services are available and their criteria. Over the last year some of the specialist services have changed ownership and the services they provide. Solace now run the outreach service formerly provided by Haringey Women’s Forum and 2 refuges in the borough have been decommissioned although are still running. It is not clear to many partner agencies what the remits are of the different specialist services.

“The work with victims is not very joined up – there is no narrative about the victim’s journey. When looking at numbers, there is no clear link and the quality of frontline work is not examined.” (Probation audit return 2014)

Staff fed back that they were confused about whether they were able to use some services, what they provided and their referral criteria. The remit of Hearthstone and its counselling service was not understood and some agencies saw it as only a housing support service. The CSC pathway shows Hearthstone as a DV project only but some reported that their remit was wider GBV as well. On accessing the council website for information, some staff reported that the information on Hearthstone was out of date or inaccurate. Solace was used by some services just because they had always referred there and not because they had assessed that Solace provided the service that their clients needed. Solace’s new role as the outreach service is quite new and we heard little about the use of this service. There were no systems in place for feedback on the success of referrals to ascertain whether the person referred actually accessed the service or was declined because of the agencies’ criteria or assessment. Public Health have expressed that they would like to see more input from the voluntary

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sector in delivering multi-agency training in education, social and health care settings. Their expertise in the wider GBV issues would be an asset to the partnership and its training. Assessing risk Many agencies have risk assessments of some sort. For domestic abuse, standard practice is to use the CAADA DASH Risk Identification Checklist (RIC). This research-based tool compiles 24 factors that are highly correlated with serious injury or death as a result of domestic abuse. The CAADA DASH RIC also identifies escalation and professional judgement as further means by which a person might be deemed High Risk. Being assessed as High Risk with this checklist should result in the support of an IDVA and a referral to the MARAC (Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference). For some, screening for domestic violence is part of an initial assessment or referral alert: Safeguarding Adults, adult mental health services, drug and alcohol services, and CSC, midwifery. For these, the client will have had to meet certain criteria in order to be eligible to be assessed. Risk assessments are carried out by a number of services, e.g. Police (by the CSU when the case is identified as a hate crime2, Hearthstone, CSC, DV Champions in the Whittington, North Middlesex Hospital’s maternity unit. It is not clear if all these DV risk assessments are the same. The police form includes most but not all of these risk factors. It is important in this context that all agencies agree on what the common tools are for assessing risk, particularly for gathering accurate data for Community Safety Strategy target of a 75% reduction in risk through the IDVA and MARAC approaches. SA have joint working protocols between the disabled adults team and adults transition team focusing on young people with disabilities and severe and enduring mental illness. This assessment stage could be an opportunity to screen and provide these young people with information and advice around abuse and pathways to support even if they have not disclosed. The statistics show us that these clients are at higher risk from abuse, so earlier intervention to make them aware of their rights and support would be good practice.

“As the incidence of domestic violence is higher in those who have a mental illness or misuse drugs or alcohol, there is a higher incidence of both sex victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse in our secondary care service users than in the general population” (Safeguarding Adults audit return 2014) “There is no assessment or links with adult and children’s safeguarding to co-ordinate offender management activities i.e. release from prisons, with family/partners/siblings who may reside at the same address or within the locality who may be placed at risk and any safety implications. There are issues around how the wider family impact and risks may not be focused on from a Safeguarding perspective when working with clients with drug and alcohol or mental health problems. The wider implications for clients going back into the families are not the main focus of the work.” (IOM audit return 2014)

2 “Every hate crime has a second level investigation, and DV is screened for at this stage. Cases are screened out if there is not enough information once all leads have been exhausted.” Police audit return.

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The current work is focused on high risk victims through the use of a criminal justice approach, risk assessments and referral to MARAC and risk focused criteria for access into statutory agencies. MARAC Haringey has good partnership engagement although the MARAC review has highlighted areas of work around referral numbers and agency representation that are being addressed by the partnership. The data figures produced by a council analyst looking at 537 referrals raised by Adult Safeguarding found 151 cases (28%) with a DV element although only 1 case was referred to MARAC. This figure seems low compared to the amount of DV identified in casework. Similarly, the North Middlesex Named Midwife reported that she had last referred a pregnant mother to MARAC two years ago. Knowing that domestic abuse can start or escalate during pregnancy, this figure seems low too. The thresholds for MARAC referral are not understood by all agencies which can result in inappropriate referrals or no referrals being made. Some agencies or departments, such as Whittington’s A&E, say they do not have time to fill in a risk assessment. This does bring up questions in some cases, about the quality of risk assessing in agencies and their referrals to MARAC. Also whether staff are confident and understand how to complete the MARAC referrals. One mental health agency reported that they would like the MARAC referral form made shorter as their staff found it too long to fill in. This is a training issue on the importance of identifying High Risk and early input through thorough risk assessing. Analysis Care pathways that are relevant to the victim and the agency working with them need to be developed. These pathways should be clear about the specialist agencies’ remits to avoid inappropriate referrals and victims not accessing appropriate services promptly. The specialist voluntary sector need to be clear about how their services to victims fit into the wider coordinated response and into other specialist services.

“It would be helpful if we had a clear written pathway for staff that set out how we dealt with disclosures of DGBV, how to deal with red flags and who to refer on to. If this also contained the relevant legislations and the thresholds for these it would help staff to define what their role should be in supporting cases and fulfilling their responsibilities. We had a safeguarding training recently that was very good and helped us understand the expectations of our role, a similar training would be very beneficial.” (ASBAT audit return 2014)

As noted above, there should be routes to resolving the confusion or disappointment about services between partners rather than it rumbling on and victims perhaps not getting the service that they deserve and that the Council intends them to have. Agencies that have an on-going relationship with their clients need to be linked in more closely with specialists. Hospitals, GPs, mental health services, Education and Youth Community projects should develop their partnership working and referral pathways thus improving communication and service. Linking agencies’ data of how many are identified and referred/ signposted on would help to build a picture of prevalence and future areas of work. Linking new or proposed initiatives through the partnership could support these projects with expertise and shared practice.

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“As DGBV features in a large proportion of CP and CiN cases, the work of social services and specialist services needs to be more integrated.” (Whittington Health Trust audit return 2014)

The partnership could also use the expertise some agencies have to inform and improve efforts in those specialist agencies. Probation have a great deal of experience of perpetrator work and could advise the drug and alcohol services, who are looking to develop their work with perpetrators.

“The Senior Practitioner sits between Hearthstone and Children services ensuring there is a strong communication between the two services. The Senior Practitioner is also a link between our services when we have a client that has no recourse to public funds ensuring that those clients get the advice and support they need.” (Community Housing Services audit return 2014)

The specialist voluntary sector needs to be clear about how their services to victims fit into the wider coordinated response and into other specialist services.

Recommendations

1. Create a clear care pathway for partners to refer clients to specialists for all strands of DGBV and include neighbouring boroughs. Agree common tools for risk assessment to ensure consistency and support accurate data collection. Ensure the specialists themselves have referral routes between themselves.

2. Create a new directory of support services, explaining their remits and referral criteria, alongside a staff guidance manual on dealing with disclosure and risk assessments. Highlight this in regular training with all frontline staff.


Support for non-specialist frontline staff Responses Policies and practice Every partner agency that is involved with the response needs to demonstrate in their policies and practices how they will deal with victims and perpetrators across the DGBV work. These need to be accessible to staff and reviewed as practice and legislation changes. In returns, some agencies had specific DV policies or wider DGBV policies but the focus tended to be on DV, in practice. Specific thought needs to be given to what agencies expect of their staff in response to wider GBV. If GBV issues are not named, they can lose focus. For some agencies, respondents reported that their Adult Safeguarding Policy would cover DGBV issues. Often victims of domestic abuse do not have the additional vulnerabilities for access to the Safeguarding service and therefore the policy might not apply to them or be relevant. Agencies, BEH MHT for instance, reported that they worked from a wide understanding of vulnerability and therefore did not limit their response to

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those who are ‘adults at risk’. Where this is so, the Safeguarding Adults policies should state this, so staff are clear about their responsibilities. The departments within the council that were not involved in the partnership had little understanding of what the approach was and how to be involved in being a responsible partner, although most referred to the safeguarding policy. The Registrar Office expressed a need for information and training for staff as they were aware of the potential presence of DGBV in their work, especially marriages under duress. The Library, Registrar Office and Direct services could be encouraged to look at how their agencies could provide valuable publicity and signposting for victims on an on-going basis and not just in periods of campaigns.

“The aim would be to have concerns about adult safeguarding, including domestic violence, as embedded in everyone’s practice as child protection procedures are now.” (Whittington Health Trust audit return 2014)

The ultimate goal would be to have DGBV responses within agencies so embedded too. Where risk assessment and safety planning training took place this was mostly tied to CP and safeguarding. The pathways to support agencies need to be developed as we found they focused on referring to two agencies, primarily Hearthstone and then Solace, and contained little about specialist support to wider GBV agencies.

“No public access to their offices – if someone showed up with a problem, nowhere in the building to talk to a client in privacy. Interview rooms are not really fit for purpose in the reception area if there is a specific need. Very difficult to triage that first presentation in that situation, though it doesn’t happen often.” (CSC audit return 2014)

Access to a safe place to talk for victims is important when they approach for help. Not all agencies can achieve this, so the policies need to reflect the situation the staff are working within. In CSC, when victims approach CSC without an appointment, staff find it difficult to find a confidential space immediately. CSC uses hot desking, so space must be found in another building up the road. Agencies need to assess how they use their office space to provide a welcoming ethos and space for disclosures.

“There is space in the Customer Services Centres and in the Advice and Options reception for private conversations to take place” (Community Housing Services audit return 2014)

Training There was evidence of DV training taking place within CSC and in some health services as part of induction of front line staff and it was carried out by the DV specialist lead. But training was not mandatory in most services or was tied to child protection. Replies also suggested that DGBV was not part of that. Few agencies required staff or managers to undertake wider GBV training unless it was core business.

Good practice: Midwife training that teaches to recognise signs and gently enquire -- noting disclosures on the file (but not hand-held notes) -- and committing to asking again several times in the course of work with the client. (Comment on North Middlesex University Hospital’s Domestic Violence and Abuse Guidelines)

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Many council departments had completed, or intended to, the mandatory E-Learning on safeguarding. Only the Registrar Office had staff undertake the E-Learning on marriage under duress. There was good practice at Homes for Haringey, where all handy men undertake an e-learning around safeguarding and carry alert cards. However, the Safeguarding training only mentions DV under physical abuse and financial but does not cover the wider GBV issues in details. To fully understand the wider issues of DGBV the safeguarding training could expand the programme inviting specialist speakers to cover the missing subjects. Staff training in the statutory agencies were mainly focused on Child Protection and Adult Safeguarding. A high percentage of adult DGBV cases not in a High Risk category would not fit the criteria for access to these services. Most of the agencies who returned the audit cited training as an area for improvement. Responders’ concerns in non-specialist agencies were about how to recognize and respond to a victim and signpost on effectively.

“We would welcome training on how to deal with relationship issues for youths and DV and gender based violence within our 6 form centres.” (School Nurse Manager audit return 2014) “Training for all staff on DGBV issues. A major issue is staff understanding when to refer a victim and which service to refer to.” (ASBAT audit return 2014) “DV is an important part of the training for first response teams . . .” (Police audit return 2014)

Pathways to specialist support Victims will approach a variety of non-specialist services, presenting with other issues where DGBV may be discovered during the visit. There needs to be a consistent system that responds from in-depth knowledge of specialist agencies and their role and scope. Some services have expressed confusion around what the specialist services provide and their referral criteria. Their referrals seem to be based on custom and practice and not policy or pathway based.

Access: School nurses have ‘drop in’ clinics in the secondary schools where young people have a confidential space where they can discuss issues that are affecting them

The core services of housing and Children and Young People services and Safeguarding did have pathways of signposting and referral. The NHS guidance used by health and Safeguarding contained a pathway for each area but was very general and not agency specific. In CSC where DGBV is part of their core work, we find evidence of some shared objective amongst the staff team and some referral routes into specialist support services. Even though the pathway used shows routes to referral, the only clear link being used consistently in CSC and Housing is with Hearthstone. Even though returns from a number of agencies stated that they referred to Hearthstone, they had no clear written up to date pathways. Some pathways ended simply with a generic term, such as ‘IDVA’ which is unlikely to understood by non-specialist staff.

“reporting abuse is a huge thing for the victim and therefore the police must respond quickly” (Police audit return 2014)

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Publicity There was a lack of consistent publicity about specialist services, legal information and longer term support services for victims available within agencies. Some agencies fed back that the lack of waiting areas and public access spaces as services moved to hot-desking and telephone customer services meant there was nowhere to display posters or literature. Locations like the Library and the Register office are ideal places to provide publicity. Agencies saw the responsibility for sourcing and purchasing publicity as the remit of specialist agencies and not their own. They were willing though to display information if given.

“It would be useful for customers suffering from DGBV to be able to obtain leaflets and information. Such information could be supplied for distribution at the Register Office.” (Registrar audit return 2014) “Having readily available publicity around support services. Using estate notice boards and council magazines like Homes Zone and Haringey People to advertise support services.” (ASBAT audit return 2014)

Diversity Haringey is the fifth most ethnically diverse borough in England. Nearly half of the residents come from Black and minority ethnic (BME) groups; 190 different languages are spoken in schools. It is the fourth most deprived borough in London. It has big differences in wealth with prosperous Highgate ward in the west of the borough to Tottenham in the east, one of the most deprived areas in the country. It is therefore essential that the services offered reflect this diverse community. In Haringey there are few specialist services providing DV support for victims who have English as a second language and even less providing for the wider GBV issues. There are limited Pan London support services including FORWARD, SBS and IMECE. The council fund 1 refuge for complex needs in the borough alongside 1 generic. There are 2 independent Asian refuges funded by Newham Asian Women’s Project. The Whittington Hospital run a specialist FGM clinic. Haringey Women’s Forum, a voluntary organisation, provides support through volunteer befrienders to survivors, run a social LGBT film night and give a voice for people with disabilities through their disability project. They have been in the borough for 30 years but have recently lost the funding for floating support to another provider. They have very limited funding and cannot with their current service meet much of the needs of Haringey’s diverse community. A specific team in Children’s and Young People’s Services case works on people with No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF). The recent data Nov 2013 – Jan 2014 from the Specialist DV worker in CSC shows that a high rate of referrals both to CSC and Hearthstone were from clients with NRPF. 62% of clients seen by them at Hearthstone and 44% of those seen in CSC were recorded as NRPF. People who have disabilities, long term mental health or learning disabilities may be eligible to receive support from Safeguarding Adult Services. The support services within the borough work with diverse communities as part of their role but do not have funded specialist resources to address the need. Analysis Many victims are identified in more general agencies before reaching a specialist. We know from IDVA research how crucial a positive and informative first response is. The first response a victim seeking help receives is crucial to whether they will engage in the help seeking process and those agencies involved. The capacity of frontline staff to respond

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effectively at the point of crisis is dependent on their knowledge of DGBV, risk factors, their knowledge of local agencies and their referral criteria. This is all dependent on the quality of policies, training and resources available to staff. The written pathways to support services should be reviewed as agencies change their referral criteria and practices so victims get correct referrals and up to date information. If all agencies looked at their service through the eyes of a victim approaching for help, they would see whether their services were accessible and approachable. Agency training should focus not only on the awareness of DGBV but also on appropriate first response to victims who disclose. A reliance on safeguarding training is likely to miss the fact that most victims of DGBV will not have the additional vulnerabilities that would bring them under the remit of safeguarding training or policies. Specialist training for those carrying out risk assessment and MARAC referrals has to be part of any robust borough training plan. As the area’s understanding of GBV issues grows, additional agreed key messages should be added to the training. To provide a consistent quality response, frontline staff they need to be equipped to provide an open gateway to services:

• An ethos within the organisation that disclosure is welcomed and support is available

• Quality training and workshops by specialist services for staff at all levels from reception to managers

• Clear screening, risk assessment and safety planning procedure • Resources to aid supporting victims: resource folder, directory of services, online

information and specialist services literature and posters • Policies and procedures that are easily understood by staff and clients • Clear written referral pathways and criteria to support services • Clear guidance on data collection and file recording to aid accountability • Supervision and professional guidance support

Funding Funding for commissioned DGBV provision across Haringey is evident at £950,000 per year but whether the services are the right ones to fill the need should be reviewed regularly. A good commissioning process should:

● Decide what you need ● Decide what specialist services you want to fund from the centre ● Plan how to absorb other service responses into stat frontline practice ● Decide how to monitor to ensure that you are getting what you want from the

services ● Review monitoring data regularly and create communication routes to review this

often. Recommendations

1. Broaden policies and practice to include all the strands of DGBV and train all public-facing staff on responses.

2. Enlist the help of specialist agencies to develop the frontline response to create a support service that truly serves its community and so that GBV issues can be brought into the heart of the strategy.

3. Partners to think about and allocate resources: where does money need to be spent and where can changes be integrated into other work or expenditures.

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5. When looking for funding, think about who benefits – as in the hospital example above – and start funding efforts there.

Build strong links to the good practice and impressive initiatives in place Responses & Analysis The compiled list of good practice is in Appendix 6. Some of the activities listed there were not identified by the organisations, but rather by us. A number of key agencies for those experiencing DGBV are now working together: a Senior Practitioner sits between Hearthstone and CSC to assist, largely, those with no recourse to public funds. There is a specialist DV worker for those with drugs and alcohol problems and Hearthstone has been a hub for a number of services for those suffering domestic abuse. Public Health provide a sexual health worker for a sixth form college. School nurses have drop in clinics in secondary schools. These joint efforts move help closer to those needing it. There is the capacity to provide mapping information. The MASH data is providing mapping information on domestic abuse in the borough. Probation also have a system for flagging files of victims and perpetrators of domestic abuse which can be used for mapping purposes. These can be harnessed to build a locality-based understanding of DV to inform plans. It might be expanded in time to cover GBV occurrences too. Several agencies are thinking about old responsibilities in a new way: the police Non-Crime Desk is improving the response to vulnerable people they felt they were missing by focussing on crime. Homes for Haringey mentioned their 2020 project that aims to increase young people’s access to the job market which they see as a way to support healthy relationships. Public Health has produced a healthy lifestyle app for 13 to 17 year olds which provides information on DV and healthy relationships. But such efforts to create new channels of support and information to and from victims shows thoughtful innovation. The commissioners we spoke to were, understandably, very evidence-led. That approach should be introduced into the partnership not just to commission specialist services but also to develop a compelling partnership data set and evaluate the work of the whole partnership. Commissioners also might be asked to incorporate expectations of DGBV policies and responses into the contracts (as noted above). The BEH MHT’s Domestic Violence and Abuse Protocol has much to be admired. It lists possible indicators of domestic abuse, highlights separation as a time of heightened risk, promotes the benefits of routine enquiry, outlines steps to take and what needs to be recorded, following up the disclosure with the client, responding to disclosures of abusive behaviour by clients, etc. They also provide a range of useful appendices: CAADA DASH

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RIC, a DV risk assessment for children, sample safety plans, and care pathways for different boroughs. Several organisations have launched or are planning internal steering groups or meetings – the safeguarding committee at the North Middlesex, the internal workshop at the Whittington, the Internal Domestic Abuse steering group at HAGA – to look at their responses, map gaps, and provide direction. Other partners might try this as a one-off kick-start to incorporating not just DV, but the whole of the DGBV into their work. We also found that there was a strong ethos of responsibility expressed by a number of agencies that in time should pervade the work of all the partner agencies. This is perhaps best expressed in the BEH MHT DV&A Protocol:

“Under no circumstances assume that somebody else will ask the questions.” In the best partnerships, information about services and delivery are brought to the group for discussion. Where all partners have their part in the care pathway, they will understand how changes in one service can affect another. They work together to minimise losses, share costs, and learn from each other. Recommendations

1. Share your plans with partners so they can add value and be a ‘critical friend’. 2. Create opportunities to learn from each other. 3. Look for ways to work together. 4. Look for ways to consult each other about new ways of working or potential

initiatives. 5. Commissioners incorporate DGBV responsibilities into their expectations of non-

specialist as well as specialist services.

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Making plans Throughout this exercise, we have found most Haringey partners engaged and reflective. When asked about gaps in services, many started with gaps in their own services. Though they were not collecting statistics, several partners told us the statistics they would like to capture. Nearly everyone had plans. So, with the good practice we’ve seen, the personal commitment to this agenda and the gift of self-reflection, what is slowing Haringey’s ambition? Our experience is that partner agencies who have a responsibility (statutory, commissioned or as a mission) around risk and safeguarding often have an underlying sense that the final responsibility of care lies with them. As a result, they often gather information, referrals and support from partner agencies but do not provide very much information or accept an accountability back to the partnership. For partners without explicit and core responsibilities for risk and safeguarding, exactly what is required to develop a good response and bring the issue into the heart of their work often remains a mystery. So we have provided a template for a front-line response and for being a Good Partner. These will provide a baseline for partners to understand what is required of them and their staff. We then compile the recommendations from this report. Partners may wish to argue over the templates and disagree about the priorities, but we hope with these frameworks and through those discussions that Haringey partners will be able to clear some of the brush from the pathway ahead.

The Open Gateway to Services Setting

• Posters and materials that provide information and welcome disclosures • A quiet place to retreat to for a confidential conversation

Conversation of frontline worker

• Is aware of indications of abuse • Asks the question: Are you safe at home? • Listens sympathetically • Believes • Confirms that what is happening to client is wrong • Gets emergency help in a crisis from police, health services, housing, refuge • Creates a safety plan • Knows the local services and can explain them • Provides information • Risk assesses (depending on role) and refers to MARAC • Refers to specialist services and encourages engagement – calls ahead to make

the connection

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• Asks the question again later if doing casework with the client and there are indicators

The Follow-through

• Records the disclosure and response • Checks that client made it to the specialist and follows up with client if did not

arrive

The Good Partner

Strategically ● Commits to a coordinated community response to domestic and gender-based

violence with partner agencies ● Commits to active participation in partnership at strategic level ● Ties the DGBV Partnership Strategy into own agency strategy and names

responsibilities in own strategy ● Appoints a DGBV Lead to oversee the agency’s efforts and provide strategic drive ● Works with partners to create a complete care pathway for those disclosing DGBV ● Develops HR policies to support those at risk of DGBV and address behaviours of

staff perpetrating DGBV ● Develops internal processes so that information and problems with this work can

travel up and down through own agencies well as an annual review of internal stats to identify areas for improvement and praise

● Commits funding ○ to training on policies and care pathway, ○ to monitoring performance ○ to creating, collecting and analysing data ○ to engaging with the partnership ○ to gathering input from service users ○ to providing information to survivors

Operationally ● Defines what is expected of frontline workers -- two tiered response with all

frontline workers asking the question and specialist staff providing back-up for crises and MARAC referrals? Screening by all frontline workers?

● Creates agency-specific and safe care pathway from the partnership care pathway ● Develops policies clearly outlining own agency’s expected approach and

commitment ● Commits to active participation in partnership at operational level ● Develops and collects data that reflects the work that own agency expects of staff

and relates to partner’s data so that it is possible to monitor whole care pathway ● Develops performance management process to encourage, monitor and review

delivery The following are examples of basic monitoring questions to ask

○ Do the number of disclosures and referrals reflect the expected number, based on population?

○ Do the difference in staff identifying DGBV and referring suggest further training?

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○ Is the value of training reflected in more disclosures and referrals? ● Provides a private space for staff to interview clients who disclose DGBV ● Requires regular multi-agency training on DGBV for all staff that come into contact

with the public ● Gathers, highlights and escalates concerns about own ability to deliver or on

partners’ responses – for problem-solving and resolution within partnership.

Frontline response ● Displays posters and leaflets identifying specialist support agencies in public areas ● Trains all staff to recognise signs of abuse and risk factors, even if they do not

formally risk assess. Agencies where routine screening is appropriate: maternity, A&E, GPs, police at call-outs, social services, safeguarding adults, homelessness and housing, mental health and drug and alcohol services.

● Trains all staff to ask about DGBV and to respond sympathetically, effectively and safely while signposting/referring clients on to specialist staff and/or services.

● Trains specialist staff on crisis work, risk assessing, safety planning and MARAC referrals

● Follows a clear referral pathway to support for clients ● Records disclosures and referrals and compare own stats to those of the specialist

agencies to note any discrepancies and identify and address causes ● Provides resources for frontline staff, e.g. directory of services and care pathway

for referrals ● Provides support for staff responding to a disclosure -- to support their

professional response and to provide emotional support

Compiled Recommendations

Develop shared strategy and objective between partners 1. Broaden the partnership to include the range of agencies necessary for a coordinated

community response DV and GBV. 2. Agree a CCR policy and protocols, signed off by agency heads, that commits the

partners to being ‘Good Partners’. 3. Develop the vision of a good partnership response to all strands of DGBV – get advice

from specialists, ask partners to make a plan to improve their agency responses to all the strands of DGBV.



6. Create a robust accountability mechanism to monitor the above. 7. Support the DGBV Coordinator role by bringing it back to Community Safety and



1. Partners to create Leads in their agencies to plan and drive internal processes to

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meet the partnership’s DGBV strategy. The Lead needs to be senior enough to drive innovation and change across the organisation. Include responsibilities in JD and evaluate as part of performance management.

2. Partners to allocate resources to the role of Lead to ensure effective delivery of its objectives.

Create accountability to each other 1. Working group to address the development of a dataset, advised by commissioners. 2. Create a data set that links from one agency to another. Develop baseline data that

ties in with the objectives set and identify gaps to inform partners’ IT development. 3. Create a better understanding of what everyone delivers to the overall effort,

perhaps through training day where strategic and voluntary partners explain their services to each other and all the work is mapped against each other.

4. All partner agencies to agree what a good frontline response looks like and ask partners to set up systems to deliver it.

5. Develop better understanding of the outcomes of the specialist services, for example, is risk reduced, are clients engaged with other agencies, have injunctions been obtained

6. Create a mechanism by which partners’ efforts can be discussed, challenged and supported. Provide channels for escalation of concerns.

7. Ask Probation to talk to partners about their restructure and how the new services might fit into the partnership and what information the partnership might request from them.

Coordinate response and develop care pathways

1. Create a clear care pathway for partners to refer clients to specialists for all strands of DGBV and include neighbouring boroughs. Agree common tools for risk assessment to ensure consistency and support accurate data collection. Ensure the specialists themselves have referral routes between themselves.

2. Create a new directory of support services, explaining their remits and referral criteria, alongside staff guidance manual on dealing with disclosure and risk assessments. Highlight this in regular training with all frontline staff.


Support for non-specialist frontline staff 1. Broaden policies and practice to include all the strands of DGBV and train all public-

facing staff on responses 2. Enlist the help of specialist agencies to develop the frontline response to create a

support service that truly serves its community and so that GBV issues can be brought into the heart of the strategy.

3. Partners to think about and allocate resources: where does money need to be spent and where can changes be piggybacked onto other work or expenditures.


5. When looking for funding, think about who benefits – as in the hospital example above – and start funding efforts there.

Build strong links to the good practice and impressive initiatives in place 1. Share your plans with partners so they can add value and be a ‘critical friend’

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2. Create opportunities to learn from each other. 3. Look for ways to work together 4. Look for ways to consult each other about new ways of working or potential

initiatives 5. Commissioners incorporate DGBV responsibilities into their expectations of non-

specialist as well as specialist services.

The Authors Laura Croom is a consultant for local authorities and domestic violence services. After an early career in publishing, she trained to be a lawyer before an interest in social policy work took her to the Citizens Advice Bureau. There she initially worked with general clients before developing an innovative project that focused on victims of domestic abuse. She then joined CAADA in its early days to train and promote the work of IDVAs and MARACs. While there she helped build its training programme for IDVAs, developed a structure for information-sharing between agencies, worked with the Government on its Specialist Domestic Violence Task Force, and undertook research on what made IDVA services work so well. From this, she designed service standards, and then piloted and rolled out Leading Lights, the first accreditation programme for IDVA services. As an independent consultant, Laura has worked with police forces, local authorities, and advocacy services to develop effective partnerships. With Bear Montique and others, she visited DGBV partnerships around the country to develop Standing Together’s Home Office-commissioned guide to effective domestic violence partnerships, In Search of Excellence. To further this work, she is now chairing domestic homicide reviews. Her work to date has convinced her of the power of a dedicated worker, backed by a co-ordinated system of support to help victims of domestic violence break free. Bear Montique has spent the last 25 years improving the quality of response to survivors of domestic violence. She has used her years of expertise within the sector to develop quality services, providing for the needs of survivors of Domestic and Gendered Based Violence. She has continued to influence policy both locally and nationally by sharing her knowledge and working constantly in partnership. In 1998 she set up ADVANCE, the first independent advocacy project in London, and developed it into a leading service. It has become an example of best practice and expanded into a multi-site project. The advocates’ training programme she designed set the template for the national accredited training run by CAADA. Bear was awarded the prestigious National Justice Award in 2008 for her work with victims. Bear also managed the West London Rape Crisis Centre before setting off on world travels. For Standing Together work she visited DGBV partnerships around the country and co-authored the Standing Together’s Home Office-commissioned guide to effective domestic violence partnerships, In Search of Excellence. In her current role as an independent consultant she helps local authorities, and voluntary projects to review their response to survivors and their role within the partnership. She also facilitates a focus on effective data and monitoring systems. She believes that by sharing knowledge and listening to survivors’ needs, agencies working together can make seeking help a safer and more positive experience.

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Appendices 1. Questionnaire 2. Policies submitted 3. Simple Mapping Grid 4. Contributions towards strategy answers 5. Gaps Identified 6. Good Practice 7. Template for agency commitment to CCR

Documents

DGBV Mapping Audit Haringey Report - final...DGBV Mapping Audit of Haringey’s Statutory Services !! ! and evaluate as part of performance management. 2. Partners to allocate resources