14
Examination of witnesses
Harriet Wistrich, Beverley Jones and Ruth Cherry-Galal.
Q21 The Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee, looking at the post-legislative state of play, the impact of this legislation and whether there are shortcomings or gaps.
We have three expert people before us today; let me introduce them to you. We have Harriet Wistrich. She is the founder and CEO of the Centre for Women’s Justice. She has been a solicitor for 30 years. I have known her girl and woman. She is a truly impressive champion of women’s rights and the winner of the Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year Award and many others for her incredible public law work. It is really great to have you here, Harriet. Thank you so much for coming.
I also want to welcome Beverley Jones, who is the CEO of The Next Chapter, and with her is Ruth Cherry-Galal. Beverley Jones is an experienced senior leader, having worked in a variety of senior leadership roles in public services. She leads this organisation that focuses on strategic direction, collaboration and partnerships—all things Baroness Porter raised on how to work together to improve outcomes. She will help us address whether we are achieving them with this legislation.
Ruth Cherry-Galal is an independent domestic violence adviser and a services manager. Her team supports victims and survivors who are generally referred to them by the police. It is great to have you here; I know you work in Essex. Thank you for being here and assisting us.
You have heard what the general questions are: the challenges that the police face when arresting, charging and investigating offences in the new Act. We mentioned coercive and controlling behaviour, psychological and emotional abuse, and non-fatal strangulation. We did not really touch on financial abuse, which is often present but seems to fall away when it comes to investigation.
Harriet, how has the Act played out as far as you can see it from your seat of running a really busy and demanding women’s justice organisation?
Harriet Wistrich: The Act introduced some important new measures: for example, non-fatal strangulation, which was—
The Chair: You were very much behind that.
Harriet Wistrich: We were involved in trying to bring it through because we saw on the ground that the police were not identifying it as a separate offence. If it was prosecuted, it was as a very low-level offence. However, the understanding of non-fatal strangulation is that it is an indicator of a much more serious form of offending, and part and parcel of a pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour.
From our perspective as essentially a legal charity, our concern about policing, prosecution and probation in relation to domestic abuse is translating what we have in legislation into implementation, such as the introduction of the new DAPO scheme. We are a designated body for bringing police super-complaints, which are complaints where you look at system failures in policing. The first police super-complaint we brought was around failure in the implementation of protective orders, including DVPOs, which are the predecessor of DAPOs and still exist, as well as the enforcement of non-molestation orders and so on. Our super-complaint found that the police were using DVPOs in about 1% of cases and we had not seen evidence of any improvement on that. Introducing a better model of protective order is all very well but if they are not being enforced effectively or are not actually being used, they have minimal value. The important thing is rollout.
The other aspect more generally is about the understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour and the significance of non-fatal strangulation. For example, non-fatal strangulation does not mean just seeing physical marks. A piece of work being undertaken by the Institute for Addressing Strangulation finds that one problem around implementation is that police officers expect to see physical marks but we know that, in a large number of strangulation cases, the harm is not necessarily borne out with bruising. There has to be that understanding.
What are the issues in terms of understanding? Clearly, training is very important. The two witnesses we have just heard are very senior officers; they absolutely understand the issues and speak very well. They have consulted with the academics, they work with the front-line sector and they can speak the speak, which is great. They genuinely understand the issues. How is that filtered down to the ground? Who is actually enforcing this? We talk about front-line officers who get very basic domestic matters training, which may be a day of training around domestic abuse. Within that they have to understand all the different elements. Is that enough? As an example, one trainer described it to us as, “You get more training as a police officer to recognise a bald tyre than to understand domestic abuse”.
We have to look at the way it filters down so mid-level officers are able to ensure that their officers on the ground are doing the right thing. We see this in particular with the most tragic cases such as domestic homicide reviews and inquests. There will have been this many callouts to the police or this many warnings, and each time an officer came to the scene they fail to respond correctly. They fail to stop it from escalating. That is the picture we see on the ground.
As well as training, there is accountability. Police reform will generally look at the Crime and Policing Bill, which we were just discussing. We absolutely agree with the previous witnesses; bringing together leadership within policing by not having 43 separate forces doing their own thing is good. However, you also have to have individual officer accountability and we have concerns about some proposals in the Bill, which I can talk about more.
I am just giving you a general introduction but another big piece of work we did was around police-perpetrated domestic abuse. We did a super-complaint on that. The real endemic problems within policing are about addressing that issue.
The Chair: How did the super-complaint system come into being? Many people listening in their offices, universities or homes will not know about it. Your organisation has undertaken a number of them; what is the entitlement that lets you do it? Where did that come from?
Harriet Wistrich: Prior to the introduction of the police super-complaint system in 2018, the only way members of the public or organisations could make complaints about policing was through the normal police complaint mechanism, which was very much focused around the conduct of individual officers. What happens when you see patterns of failure, where you see this repeated again and again, or where something systemic is going on? As an organisation that works across England and Wales, we are focused on looking generally at the patterns of repeat failures.
The introduction of the police super-complaint system enables us to complain about a system failure in policing. The first super-complaint was around failures in the enforcement of protective orders. The second super-complaint was around police-perpetrated domestic abuse. From our perspective, it has been a really effective way of bringing to light issues that we see on a systemic level. The problem is the outcome of that process. At the moment, police super-complaints are investigated by a triumvirate body of the Inspectorate, the College of Policing and the IOPC. However, these three bodies only have the power to make general recommendations and to help assist in looking at it. Again, it does not necessarily lead to change on its own, so we then have to move forward with translating the recommendations that come out of the super-complaint process into change and enforcement.
The Chair: I am asking you because, at the end of all this, we are going to write a report and I am interested in us drawing some lessons from the way you can effect real change. As you have been describing, sometimes individual cases can show us patterns but, if you want to introduce real change, you have to have some mechanisms for doing that. I am interested in the whole business of the super-complaint system. I may ask you to write to us later rather than spending adequate time on it here today. It might be helpful for us to know something about it.
I am going to pass along to Ruth and Beverley. Ms Jones, Ms Cherry-Galal, what do you have to say about the same thing? How has this legislation, as you see it, been working?
Ruth Cherry-Galal: I work in the Essex area; that is the force I am specific to. I do not know anywhere else but, with regard to coercive and controlling behaviour, there is still a lack of recognition of being able to identify it at an early stage.
As we know, it became a crime in 2015. With regard to the level of successful outcomes for coercive and controlling behaviour within Essex, I cannot give you a statistic but I can tell you that I have a team of around 25 members of staff who work with between 400 and 600 clients at any one time. There will always be a lack of understanding from a front-line officer with regard to what coercive and controlling behaviour looks like, as they will perhaps not ask the right questions. The DARA was created in order to allow officers—
The Chair: It is important to tell people what that acronym stands for.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: I apologise. It is the domestic abuse risk assessment tool, which the police now use.
The Chair: There are something like 26 pointers on it, are there not?
Ruth Cherry-Galal: No, that is the DASH risk assessment tool. The domestic abuse, stalking and harassment tool is what we still use as a domestic abuse service. The police are using the domestic abuse risk assessment tool, which I believe has about 12.
Baroness Barran: No, it is about 21.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: Is it that many? The question types are, “Have they ever”, “often”, and “not at all”. They are not really opening a line of communication for a person to be able to tell their story. Most victims perhaps do not potentially want to tell a police officer what their story is, which is obviously where we come in as an independent service and can do a better job without—
The Chair: Being over-critical.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: Yes. We have more time to spend talking with our clients. Recognition of coercive controlling behaviour means you have identified that this person is doing a behaviour, so what impact does it have upon the victim/client? That is quite an important part of getting it through to the Crown Prosecution Service and to actually be able to go ahead with a successful charge when looking at coercive and controlling behaviour as a stand-alone. Domestic abuse for me is about power and control, which is coercive and controlling behaviour. It is about those emotional abuse tactics, all those things that occur within a domestic abuse setting. They need to recognise it better and see it better at an early opportunity.
The Chair: Beverley, is there anything you would like to add to all this?
Beverley Jones: I sit in a different part of the organisation, so I am not front-line supporting or supporting practitioners, but my overriding sense is the difficulty around gathering evidence for coercive and controlling behaviour. By its nature, it is a pattern of behaviours and, as Ruth described, the impact of those patterns of behaviours. How do you capture that? We have myriad resources that we give to our clients to help them capture it, but being able to talk about or demonstrate to the CPS the devastating impact of that pattern of behaviour is quite difficult. That is probably why we have such a low number of cases, or a low proportion of our cases that are supported by the CPS and which go through to prosecution. Harriet may have a differing view but my sense is that, by separating out the offences into the different strands of domestic abuse and not having an overarching offence of domestic abuse, you need to reach that evidential threshold for each one you are going to take rather than say that domestic abuse covers a wide range and you may get differing levels across all those different strands.
When we look at the stats that come out of our system, it is rare for somebody to experience only one strand of domestic abuse. Generally, they suffer from three, four or five strands. The ability to pull all those together and say, “This is the entire picture; this is domestic abuse that is being experienced and perpetrated” might mean that we could be more effective in terms of bringing people to justice.
Q22 Baroness Gerada: Harriet, I come from the health field. When you said you had looked at terrible cases, exactly the same thing happens in health. If you do a case control—i.e., take cases that have not ended in terrible things—there is very little difference. We look at it through a different lens. If you take away complete incompetence, it usually translates into poor communication, poor collaboration and a lack of continuity. If you take away people who are unbelievably incompetent, those are the three things left. Is that the same thing you are picking up? Is there a theme behind these terrible cases rather than complete incompetence? If you did not look at cases that ended in disaster, would the same issue be there? Does that make sense?
Harriet Wistrich: It is likely to be very much the same. There is a lack of understanding by those on the ground. Sometimes it is incompetence and sometimes it is worse: resistance, antagonism and underlying attitudes. We talk about the misogynistic culture that has been exposed within policing; that is not just about police perpetrators but about the attitudes of officers on the ground as well. Yes, one does see that.
From my experience, and from the point of view of learning what will make officers better, there should be more learning from hard cases. When you sit and listen to a tragic story about somebody who has died as a result of several failures that have happened at various different lines, it can translate into you realising why it is important to go back and put the right marker by it. When we look at police-perpetrated domestic abuse, it is listening to those survivors, the people who have been through the experience, or through the families of survivors where there are deaths. If you have a shred of humanity in you, as most officers will—there will be some that are beyond hope—and you hear those stories, it can translate into realising why the things you do and are told to do every day are important.
Baroness Gerada: We heard in the last session that the amount of data the police have to put in is so great that it actually detracts from the policing and caring, so the data is driving poor practice. Do you have a view on that?
Harriet Wistrich: I do not know too much about what police officers are required to do but data is very important in terms of our understanding. The question is how we make it a process that does not become a burden. It is absolutely crucial that the police computer system can easily be searched to find connections. We have seen that again and again in terms of understanding the extent and nature of the problem, especially with serial perpetrators. We need these things recorded. As to what is the best way to do it, I do not know the details of that.
The Chair: Ruth, do you have any thoughts on how you create that real understanding?
Ruth Cherry-Galal: As Harriet has said, part of the training needs to be the voice of the victim or looking at cases resulting in an unfortunate death. People need to hear the truth and the awfulness of how domestic abuse affects not just one person but the whole family and the extended family. Officers really need to see it first hand, which, as Harriet said—I totally agree—will perhaps give a little more humanitarianism to the job role they are completing. Front-line officers unfortunately do not have enough life experience, training or understanding of domestic abuse or controlling and coercive behaviours.
I always talk about domestic abuse being about power and control. That is what the coercive and controlling behaviour, sexual abuse, financial abuse and emotional abuse is about. It is all about one person having power and control over another, and officers really need to understand that rather than it potentially being another domestic, which we have tried to move very far away from over the years.
When a person continually calls 999 but does not want support once the police arrive, it can unfortunately be difficult for officers to attend. I appreciate that but what they are not seeing is how that person is feeling and why they are saying, “No, thank you” to the police officers when they arrive at the door.
Q23 Baroness Rafferty: My question is around the issues raised by police intervention, including the arrest, charging and prosecution of perpetrators. What do those issues raise for victims or survivors, since we have been talking about victims and survivors?
The Chair: It is that interface: the police officers come, they make a report, and it ends up with the Crown Prosecution Service. Where is the slippage in there? What is going on there? Hearing the assistant commissioner describe the statistics, it sounded rather wonderful: some 76% of their cases lead to a conviction in most domestic abuse cases. One then finds out that actually very few complaints ever lead to anything to do with courts at all. What is our answer to that? That is what Baroness Rafferty is really trying to pinpoint.
Harriet Wistrich: I have probably done more work around rape and sexual violence than domestic abuse, but what we see is that a report is made and the police investigate. How long does it take for them to investigate? How busy are their workloads? How much understanding do they have? How are they looking at it?
We found one issue around the charging of coercive and controlling behaviour, which is an important one. Police see different things going on in a relationship and if there is any sexual violence, as is very often the case in a rape as well as in other forms of control, it then goes out to the specialist RASSO team. The rest of the context is almost de-prioritised because rape is the most serious. We see cases where the police prioritise prosecution and referral to the CPS for a rape prosecution but rape prosecutions are notoriously difficult. If that prosecution fails or it is NFA’d before it gets to trial, the rest of the context may have gone by the wayside or has not even been picked up. The critical thing is to understand the whole context.
The Chair: Context is all.
Harriet Wistrich: Context is everything. It is not just a question of analysing the behaviour of the perpetrator but also looking at the surrounding circumstances of the individual situation and the intersectional issues around particular communities over race and disability issues, including women in relation to men and how men are more likely to be believed and backed up in the world. You have to look at coercive control and understand it as described by Evan Stark, who rolled it out as a form of personal entrapment. It almost becomes a political concept rather than somebody with a series of acts. That is a big answer.
In terms of your question, we see police investigating. Victims will drop out over a variety of issues and there are often threats around domestic abuse. Other reasons are the very slow progress towards charging decisions, the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision making and how it goes about identifying the issue before it gets to court. There is a huge attrition rate, which we know very well in relation to rape and sexual violence but it also exists in relation to domestic abuse.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: There is a big crossover between domestic abuse and sexual abuse anyway. Most domestic abuse cases will have an element of sexual control within the relationship.
I see officers going out to the investigation. When it is high or medium-risk domestic abuse, it will go to a specialist officer. Unfortunately, at the moment, in my experience and area, those officers are inundated with the level that comes through and have a big task to complete. The support of an independent domestic violence adviser who can be that conduit between the officer and the victim is vital. It is important to ensure that we keep victims on board; as Harriet said, a large proportion may drop out. They may drop out because they do not trust the police or they are absolutely petrified of what will happen and are scared of going to court. Fear in general is a reason why they may drop out but also because it takes too long. They also feel that nobody really believes them, because it is taking so long.
The Chair: It seems to me that every police force should have a Ruth Cherry-Galal brought in to enable understanding, be a receiver of information and act as someone who really knows their stuff.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: I appreciate that comment, thank you very much.
The Chair: The world is hearing it.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: We have a very good working relationship with our police colleagues in Essex. We are doing lots of good work. Previous guests talked about the algorithms that are trying to identify the highest risk of harm perpetrators. We work very closely with Essex Police around that team of professionals; they are known as the domestic abuse problem-solving team and manage the high-risk, high-harm perpetrators, and they also work very closely with us alongside the victims. Those perpetrators may have six or seven different victims so we obviously do a lot of information sharing with people we all work with. We try exceptionally hard to build that relationship with the police and it is a good working relationship. Problems often come when there are changes. There are changes all the time. There was a DI but now that DI is someone else; it is the move-on. It is that continuation of trying to make sure you are doing everything you possibly can to assist the force in understanding the problems they are working with.
The Chair: Is that your experience too, Beverley? Can working closely with the police make all the difference?
Beverley Jones: Absolutely. When we talk to our partners we use the term “staying in our lane”. What we know best is what our clients, victim-survivors, are experiencing and how to support them. But on its own, that is not a resolution to the problem for the individual or wider. If everybody stayed in their lane, did what they were experts in and worked together, it would give us the best possible opportunity to find some resolution for individuals and more widely from a society perspective.
We are incredibly lucky in Essex because the police culture recognises the expertise we bring to the charity and victim sectors and they want to work alongside us. We are incredibly lucky with that. They take our voice into account; they work with us and help us shape, influence and provide the training Ruth has talked about from a trauma-informed perspective; they also bring us into the College of Policing to deliver sessions; they enable us to provide shadowing opportunities for specialist officers so that they can directly experience—
The Chair: A bit of shadowing; it might be very good to hear those stories directly.
Beverley Jones: Absolutely. The way Ruth talks is incredibly powerful, as are our other practitioners. As she described, the partnership working relies on personal relationships, on officers within the force having that passion and drive for this particular topic so they champion it within their own force. Without that organisation to organisation, you end up without the effective partnership working that really affects change. Of course, officers have a rotation and move themselves around but it feels like, just as you get to the point where you have a fabulous relationship and are really starting to get some traction and understanding, you get an email saying, “I am moving on in three weeks’ time, here is my successor and I have done a handover document”. You feel like you are three steps back and starting again. It is frustrating from our perspective. You have to admit to a little fatigue sometimes when you feel like you are starting again.
The Chair: I would like the Lord Bishop of Derby to come in because it is really important that we look at different communities, and Harriet has picked up on this already. Individual communities have particular problems and issues.
Q24 Lord Bishop of Derby: What issues do minoritised victims and survivors face in how the police enforce the Act, and what criminal justice issues do minoritised women, face particularly in the delivery of the Act?
Harriet Wistrich: As the Act was going through Parliament, the wider VAWG sector was pushing on a number of different issues. Although lots of very good measures came in, there were a couple of issues. If I have a chance later, I will talk about criminalised survivors. One issue was in relation to those with insecure immigration status. That is not all minoritised survivors but migrant survivors. There are huge issues. There is the issue of the firewall between policing and immigration, the fears those who do not have secure immigration status have about reporting and the way abusers know how to manipulate that to keep them stuck in their relationships. I am afraid that the recent announcements over the earned settlement scheme and changes to asylum laws are going to make it far worse and put the lives of those who do not have established immigration status at huge risk. This is an issue to flag, and the sector was unable to persuade Parliament to get round it. Part of the purpose of the Domestic Abuse Act was to bring British law in line with the Istanbul Convention but there was an opt-out in relation to that particular issue.
The Chair: The Istanbul Convention being about the rights of women and girls.
Harriet Wistrich: Yes. Those particular issues relate to migrant survivors. In relation to other black and minoritised communities—it would be great to hear from a specialist organisation in more detail—we undertook a piece of work with Imkaan, which was mentioned previously. That is a second tier—
The Chair: I am sure Southall Black Sisters has worked with you.
Harriet Wistrich: We work very closely with Southall Black Sisters. We looked at the deaths and suicides of black and minoritised women and two standout issues arose from that. One was in relation to interpreters and the fact that, while interpreters may be provided, they do not necessarily understand the issues or might be male, as victims do not have the right to request a female interpreter. For many women from certain communities, it is—
The Chair: Speaking in front of a male interpreter might be difficult.
Harriet Wistrich: We raised a specific issue in relation to that. Data is again very important but it is not there in terms of understanding the extent and nature of the failures in relation to black and minoritised victims.
Baroness Gohir: In terms of black and minoritised women who do not have a problem with their immigration status, what barriers are stopping a case from escalating to an arrest or prosecution? For example, are there issues around the perpetrator saying to the male police officer, “Oh, she has poor mental health” or, “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about”? There may be other examples. What is stopping it from escalating? Is anything coming up about those perpetrators not being arrested even when there is a non-molestation order and it not being enforced?
Harriet Wistrich: Yes; I talked a little earlier about the non-enforcement of protective orders but this is a wider issue. It is amplified particularly in relation to certain communities and if victims do not have the language it is hugely problematic. We see other things, such as an expectation that the children can do the translating, which puts a huge burden on—
The Chair: The children; “Whose side are you taking?”
Harriet Wistrich: Yes. In terms of police response, one thing that we have seen more generally, which extends beyond black and minoritised, is perpetrators being able to convince police officers that they are the reasonable, rational and calm person but she is hysterical, does not understand, and so on. In many cases it can end up with the victim being arrested on counter-allegations. It is a huge issue.
The Chair: Do either of you have direct experience of minoritised women?
Ruth Cherry-Galal: I was just listening to your counter-allegations and thought, please do not get me started on this just yet.
Not all our referrals necessarily come from the police. In fact, only about 30% of our clients will ever report to the police so we see a different side to that as well. There is a route and a plan as to what we will do in order to support that person. We work with other agencies that support us in getting financial status and a right to remain for three months. The MVDAC—Migrant Victims of Domestic Abuse Concession—is the immigration order that allows a victim to have three months’ worth of financial support to stay within the country while we wait for the longer-term immigration status to take place. Obviously, it depends on what status that person has in the first place but our service supports anybody and everybody who comes to us.
With regard to policing, there are many people who do not wish to report to the police from lots of different minority groups and not just the black minority; it could be the Gypsy, Roma, and Travellers or the deaf community. There are lots of people who do not wish to speak to the police for all sorts of reasons, which is why our services are important. I am not answering the question particularly but adding value to the point in question. Many victims of domestic abuse are not going to speak to the police at any point.
The Chair: It is very important for the listening public to know that, for example, disabled women are often on the receiving end. The statistics on the extent to which people with disabilities are on the receiving end of serious abuse are shocking. Is there anything you want to add, Beverley?
Beverley Jones: To go back to an earlier point around the training of police officers and risk to minoritised communities—whether cultural or physical disability—it is understanding what that means from an intersectional perspective on the risk to the person who is in front of the officer at the time. That lack of understanding as to the wider implications of that person’s circumstances leads back to the level of training that police officers have, not only in terms of their initial training but their continued professional development. What we know in our area is that, while there is huge support and passion for domestic abuse, individual officers are not given protected time to undertake CPD or have an opportunity to come and shadow with us to learn and understand those wider implications.
The Chair: Is it not built into their professional development?
Beverley Jones: No, and that is a frustration to us and officers. They are incredibly busy.
On the flip side, Essex Police is really keen to engage with us. We are part of the panel that looks at body-worn camera footage. We provide that independent perspective as to what it would have felt like as the victim, which is incredibly important. All the things we are talking about in terms of who is the most convincing person in front of the officer at the time relates to understanding how trauma will impact on somebody’s responses and behaviours. A person may seem hysterical, withdrawn or not bothered by something. However, understanding that that is a trauma response, which may not be how they would respond personally, would make an officer with a couple in front of him far better able to judge which one they should be most concerned about.
The Chair: Baroness Barran, you have been very involved with training and so on.
Q25 Baroness Barran: Yes, a poacher turned gamekeeper—sorry about this. To declare my conflict of interest, which is a bit out-of-date, I was very involved in the development of the IDVA training and role. What do you see as the gaps in training for specialists like yourselves and others? I am eight years out-of-date but the conversation, at that time, was around the need for specialist training for women at different levels of risk and a proper focus on women who were not high risk, accepting that risk moves around. Is that still the issue or is it about working effectively in a multi-agency way? Is it a cross-cutting thing or is it defined by groups of women? It would just be interesting to hear what you feel.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: Our IDVA team have the IDVA qualification; they all go through professional training alongside learning as doing with a mentor. All staff who work with high-risk victims of domestic abuse will have the IDVA qualification. As you said, risk is fluid and is going to move all the time but there is a medium-risk support service that has training but not IDVA; it is a level down from that. They have specialist training as well in order to be able to support that group.
I do not believe we have a problem with training within our organisation or with the training I provide to local police services. The domestic abuse investigation team and the domestic abuse problem-solving team will regularly invite me, when they have a new group of people coming in, to deliver a certain amount of training directly to them about this being what a victim tells us and this is what they want from you, which is quite simple: “Believe me”, for starters. They need you to believe what they are telling you and have trust and faith in the system that something is going to happen.
What a victim really needs is to be told is, “At the moment there is no update” as opposed to being told nothing. They need to know that you are doing something. If you tell them you are doing something, they can continue to have a little faith in the system.
Within our organisation, training is not an issue at all; we are all trained to the extent that we need to be. We also have stalking adviser advocates who get additional training as well as the sexual violence training. CPD is very important for us as is the training we deliver. The domestic abuse, stalking and harassment training is delivered yearly to our staff because that refresher training is super important. Why am I doing what I am doing? As Harriet said, a front-facing victim is the person who is able to tell you, “This is what it is like—please believe me”. We have a victim’s panel in Essex. It is a panel of people from different specialist services—from the IDVA service, the sexual violence service and other charitable organisations—with an audience only of police officers to explain that this is what it looks like from a victim’s perspective.
The Chair: I am looking at the clock and being reminded that there is a fatal Motion coming up on the red monitor. Baroness Gerada has to go but she has a question about children and I know it is also an issue Lord Polak is very concerned with.
Q26 Baroness Gerada: Could you send us the competency framework you have for your training? It is very similar to health. Providing training is one thing but another is the competencies are underpinning it.
What is your experience of children as victims? We asked the police specifically how they responded but in your sense what is—
The Chair: That was one thing that was argued for. This Act of Parliament accepted that domestic violence between adults had consequence for the children witnessing it; the damage to children was considerable too. To what extent does that enter into the discussions and training you do with the police? Do you want to add to that, Lord Polak?
Lord Polak: No, you have done it beautifully.
The Chair: I am sorry for stealing your thunder.
Ruth Cherry-Galal: We know that domestic abuse is child abuse. We have a team of children and young people’s workers within our organisation; they focus on direct victims—children who are victims themselves—and/or witnesses, so the children who have witnessed what is going on. We have a very good package within our service of everything that we can deliver to children. I will let Bev answer more.
Beverley Jones: From a police perspective, I am not sure that we have seen much difference in terms of how the police respond around the impact of domestic abuse on children, particularly in the family setting. Young people who are experiencing domestic abuse in their intimate relationships will have a service as well as those children who were initially seen as witnesses but are now recognised as victims in their own right.
What has come out is Op Encompass, which is the police operation that talks about sharing that information; I know you spoke about that with previous witnesses. It lets schools know when the police have attended an incident where children are in the household. It is a fabulous piece of information sharing but, when the information lands in the school setting, there is no matching work with the school that enables it to know what to do with that information when they have it. They hold this piece of information but do not know what it means for that child, what they should do with that child when they come into school that day, which parent they should speak to and how they should speak to them. They have also not had training from a trauma-informed perspective to understand themselves how to respond to that piece of information. We have had some terrible feedback from victims of domestic abuse; they have been taken to task by head teachers, in an entirely inappropriate setting, who either do not believe them or who talk to them about what they need to do with their children to keep them safe.
The Chair: The imparting of that information is a tricky business. A child may be acting out at school because of something going on at home and that is basically the reason for the child’s behaviour. That knowledge might be important but, at the same time, if people are not trained to understand what they should do with that information, it can be enormously damaging. It is very important. Thank you for flagging it, because it is one of those important things.
I want to thank all three of you for coming. It has been a really important session. To hear from you all, who are really experienced in this area, has been wonderful. If you think of anything you ought to be drawing to our attention, please write to us.
Harriet, you mentioned a concern you have that women who are abused can often be coerced into doing things of a criminal nature, such as looking after drugs or guns for somebody, and end up being prosecuted. It is that business of context. The full story of the ways in which they are coerced into criminal behaviour is often not before the court. It would be helpful—I know how busy you are—if you could let us have a bit of information around that if you have an opportunity, as it is something we want to know about.
I thank you all and say that this is the end. The public evidence session is now concluded. I want to thank our incredible witnesses and end this public meeting.
