17
Examination of witnesses
Alex Atkinson, Jeanie Lynch, Shaminder Ubhi and Beste Kayalar.
Q111 The Chair: Good morning, and welcome to this meeting of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 Committee, which is a post-legislative scrutiny committee. What does that mean? It means that a piece of legislation concerning domestic abuse was enacted in 2021. That is now five years ago. We have a House of Lords committee looking at the impact of that legislation to see whether it is working and achieving the aims of Parliament. It is a great opportunity to hear from people with great expertise, and we have some with us today.
Let me just tell you about our incredible line-up of people with expertise. We have with us Jeanie Lynch, who has been the programme manager for CoLab Women Programme since it began in 2017, nine years ago. She is the deputy chair of Safer Exeter, the local community safety partnership. Just to let you know the full scale of her expertise and how it is valued, Jeanie won the police and crime commissioner award at the West Country Women Awards for her outstanding work in combating violence against women and girls, and she was commended for her leading work in setting up the Women’s Centre for Exeter. Jeanie, it is great to have you with us.
In the room, we also have with us Alex Atkinson, who is the director of operations at Safenet Domestic Abuse Services. Alex has 28 years of experience of leadership and management within the specialist domestic abuse sector. She has been working for Safenet as part of what is called the Calico Group, which provides services to a wide community. It is wonderful to have you here, Alex.
We also have an organisation that is deeply involved in this work, the Ashiana Network. We have with us Beste Kayalar. She is here with a colleague, Shaminder Ubhi. Beste is a senior advice advocate at Ashiana and she has 12 years of front-line experience supporting survivors of gender-based violence. She has been dealing with issues such as insecure immigration—the fact that there are women who have no recourse to public funds because of their immigration status—and she deals with all the problems that minoritised communities experience in this area. Inside Ashiana, we also have Shaminder Ubhi, as I have mentioned, who is the CEO of Ashiana Network. It is an organisation led for and by Black, Asian, minoritised and migrant community women. It supports women and girls in those communities, and all that range of things that we have heard about in other sessions of this committee’s work.
Welcome to you all. Let me start with you, Alex, and I will ask a general question which I am going to ask everybody. Can you just outline the services that your organisation provides, and what do you think the advantages are of working collaboratively with other sector organisations?
Alex Atkinson: I work for Safenet Domestic Abuse Services. Our charity is 50 years old this year; we have been operating in the sector for a very long time. As you have said, we are part of the Calico Group. I am here today also representing a wider partnership that we are part of. We are the lead provider for domestic abuse support services across Lancashire. Part of that is Harv domestic abuse services, Liberty Centre, Be Free, Fylde Coast Women’s Aid, Key, and Loving Me, which is through the Emily Davison Centre. We work in partnership across Lancashire to provide 24-hour immediate access to safe accommodation. That is the first stage; the second stage is more dispersed, longer-term accommodation. We also provide the community-based support—high-risk IDVA provision across the services. We deliver Healthy Relationships across the schools in Lancashire together as a partnership, and we provide specialist children’s services.
One of the things we are able to deliver as a partnership is that we each have some specialisms. At Safenet, we work with higher-level complex needs services and provide specialist 24-hour safe accommodation for women who have multiple vulnerabilities. We are able to provide that support. We work alongside Loving Me, which provides specialist support and safe accommodation for trans and non-binary survivors, which is really difficult to access across services. We provide services for male victims as well, and we provide access for Black and minoritised survivors across the services.
The Chair: That is incredible. Thank you for describing it to us. I am going to bring in Jeanie. Jeanie, you could perhaps describe what CoLab does.
Jeanie Lynch: It is lovely to be here this morning. CoLab Exeter has been going for 10 years. We are coming up to our 10th anniversary. We are primarily a health and well-being hub comprising about 35 different organisations; that includes housing, drug and alcohol services, a doctor’s surgery, mental health support, probation, and provision for people who are rough sleeping. The women’s offer has been part of this for the past nine years. We recognised that there was a need in Exeter and different parts of Devon for a specific offer for women, particularly those who initially were in the justice system. As we began to understand what was going on, we saw a lot of the women had ended up in the justice system through coercion, abuse and control by males, and the levels of domestic abuse and sexual violence across all the women were absolutely huge.
During the past 10 years, CoLab has evolved into what I would call a community response. Women in Exeter account for 58% of rough sleepers. Obviously, access to domestic abuse support for women in that situation can be incredibly difficult. Last year we became part of a new alliance, which is called the Devon Domestic Abuse Alliance, made up of seven organisations across Devon. That now has the contract with Devon County Council for the provision of domestic abuse support across the county, with the idea that there is one service with five elements, which include gateway, community, accommodation, multiple disadvantage and trauma therapy. We are very much community-based and collaboratively based within Exeter itself but also across wider Devon.
The Chair: Shaminder, I was going to put this question to you about describing what Ashiana does, given that you are the CEO.
Shaminder Ubhi: As you said, Ashiana Network is a led by and for organisation, primarily for Black and minoritised women from South Asian, Turkish and Middle Eastern communities. We have been around since 1989, so we have been in the sector for 35-plus years. Our role is really to provide specialist provision for black and minoritised women; that includes specialist refuge provision. We have six refuges across three north-east London boroughs, providing a number of bed spaces particularly for women with no recourse to public funds. That is funded through various means, but London Councils has been supporting that provision.
We also deliver advice and counselling services for women in the community, so women will contact us and be directed through to support, whether it is safeguarding, benefits, welfare support or housing. Counselling is another element of what we do: we offer specialist therapeutic support for women in the community. Another area of work is our specialist immigration legal advice. For many years, we have been working quite significantly with women with no recourse to public funds. We have therefore developed a service that enables us to now have two solicitors working within the team, who are able to advise women and help them through the process of legalisation.
The Chair: Beste, I am not going to come to you because I know that you are from the same organisation and are unlikely to say anything very different, but I will come to you in relation to other questions later.
Q112 Baroness Sugg: Thank you very much for your introductions. You have obviously talked about collaboration and multi-agency working and how you do that. As the chair explained, we are looking at the impact of the Domestic Abuse Act. I am interested to know what the impact has been of the Act, how you work across agencies, and how you can do collaboration since it was introduced. I will start with Jeanie, if I may.
Jeanie Lynch: For us, one of the key advantages that it has made to multi-agency working is that it has obviously given us a much stronger definition and statutory footing. Coming back to the collaboration element, that has enabled us to work with that shared understanding and definition across different parts of the sector, which was perhaps a bit patchy and not so well joined up previously. There is obviously still work to do but having that shared definition has created improved communication and consistency across the board.
Obviously, for us here at CoLab, as I said, we have 35 agencies under the one roof, alongside the Devon Domestic Abuse Alliance. Looking at the co-commissioning of joined-up services, it has a much stronger response. It also means that people who are experiencing domestic abuse do not have to keep repeating a story or go from pillar to post. We are able to pull together to ensure that the person gets the best outcomes without having to be re-traumatised.
One of the key things for us here in Devon was that with the new duties for local authorities, with the domestic abuse tendering process coming up again recently, we were able to take part in a two-year test-and-learn project. That was really about identifying—particularly in our case—the differences in what would work for women who had experienced multiple disadvantages. Across the board, in terms of increased accountability, oversight, and better working together and stronger partnership, it has really been noticeably beneficial.
Baroness Sugg: That is really good to hear, but obviously I note what you said about how there is still always more we can do in this area.
Alex Atkinson: I agree with Jeanie. It is really important that no single agency holds the full picture of what is happening for survivors. It has definitely reduced the burden that is placed on survivors to navigate a really difficult system when they are coming into domestic abuse, when they are already experiencing really high levels of trauma. Certainly, across Lancashire with the partnership, we were able to improve the single point of access, have that understanding from the beginning, and share that across our partnerships so that they are not having to repeatedly tell agencies the risk that they are experiencing.
Through the commissioning that Lancashire County Council has done, it has enabled clearer pathways, and the clearer pathways work really well for the multi-agency interventions. Your statutory agencies that are responding at the beginning have a clearer understanding around how to access the DA sector and the services we offer within it. We are more recognised now as the specialist sector able to respond immediately to survivors’ needs.
Regarding the joint working between local authorities, there is more of a shared accountability around taking responsibility for protecting survivors and working together. There are still issues to get right across the MARAC process and around that full accountability. It is still not necessarily clear who is going to follow up and follow those actions. The burden is still very much placed on the DA sector to follow up on those actions. We are often continuing to hold that case and hold the risk while trying to hold other agencies to account to enable them to do their part of the work. There are still elements of that across some statutory provision that could be improved, but the recognition of domestic abuse and of some of the statutory responsibilities around safe accommodation has improved that approach and placed it more firmly on the agenda.
The Chair: Baroness Sugg, I am sure that you would want to put your questions also to the Ashiana Network. Shaminder, we are having trouble even with the sound coming from you. We cannot see you, and we have difficulty hearing you, so it might be better that Beste Kayalar deals with the questions.
Baroness Sugg: Beste, over to you on how the Act has made a difference to multi-agency working since it was introduced.
Beste Kayalar: I work with the advice team at Ashiana. Just talking from the front-line experience, multi-agency working is very essential to all the work we do. Survivors’ needs are complex and cross several systems, including housing, immigration, and children’s social care. We are mindful that no single agency can meet all these needs, so bringing together the expertise of multiple disciplines is really important, and we really appreciate that.
The Domestic Abuse Act has helped in so many areas, particularly in recognising that domestic abuse is not only physical violence. We used to see cases where women are told that they do not qualify for homelessness assistance, for instance, because they have not experienced physical violence, despite living with serious coercive control, threats and emotional abuse. Now we are in a better position to challenge those responses as and when they happen. It is less challenging for advocates to evidence the harm of the domestic abuse to professionals when seeking multi-agency support. It is also less challenging to explain to partner agencies that women do not need to experience physical abuse to be seriously affected by the abuse itself.
We see greater awareness of coercive control in general, post-separation abuse, and of course we welcome the fact that children are now being recognised as victims in their own right. We see more positive responses from MARAC in relation to cases of non-fatal strangulation, which is positive.
Of course, there are still issues in relation to implementation. I would like to share some examples, if possible, just to highlight some. For instance, a month ago we supported a survivor with a young child, who called the police after a very serious domestic abuse incident and was advised to remain in the home because it was the Easter holiday period. The police said, “It’s Easter—the options are limited”. She was in effect told that remaining with the perpetrator during the Easter period would be safer than homelessness because there was no physical violence.
Another example is from a MARAC meeting we attended last week. We were there to present a client who experienced 30 years of domestic abuse from her husband, and she was still with him. However, she was now receiving abuse from her teenage sons. The police in the MARAC meeting—it was a DRM meeting, so a meeting prior to MARAC—stated that the abuse now was coming from children under 18 so the case would not meet the threshold for the MARAC. They explained that because they are children still under 18, this would be considered as a behavioural issue rather than domestic abuse. We had to challenge this very strongly. The VAWG lead also joined us, in a really good example of multi-agency collaboration, in explaining that although it may appear that she was experiencing domestic abuse solely from her children, the abuse was still indirectly perpetrated by her husband because he was using the children as weapons to abuse her. The police understood our point of view. This was such a great example of how and when multiple agencies come together we can have the opportunity to gently challenge each other when things go wrong.
The Chair: They might be under 18, but the idea that older teenagers, having learned and watched domestic violence, are now inflicting it on their mother too and the police do not understand that they have powers to deal with that is really quite shocking.
Baroness Gerada: I just have a quick one. I just want to ask Jeanie: you mentioned co-commissioning, how did you get pooled budgets? If you have something written that would be great. If you are getting budgets across health, social care and criminal justice, to get pooled budgets across a complex area such as this is the holy grail.
The Chair: How did you do it?
Jeanie Lynch: In terms of its response to domestic abuse, Devon County Council has a framework in place for how those budgets are devolved down, not just from the Domestic Abuse Act but obviously broader than that as well. Possibly I can try to do to offer more information around that by asking it to pass that information on.
Baroness Gerada: Fabulous; thank you. That is really interesting, and very good and far reaching.
Q113 Baroness Neate: There are quite a lot of systems in place, such as MARAC, which are intended to promote successful collaboration. In your experience, what are the most important factors that really make the difference in that multi-agency support and collaboration? Keep in mind that the measure of that obviously needs to be outcomes for survivors: not just the fact that agencies are working together but what it actually is achieving in terms of better outcomes for victim-survivors. I would like to come to Alex first.
Alex Atkinson: The MARAC process has become about sharing that information. Historically, from previously chairing MARACs myself, you had the opportunity with partners around the room to be really creative about the safety options and how to reach survivors to help them to feel safe to engage in services. The MARAC process itself obviously is done separately from survivors. The IDVA is absolutely there to give the voice of the survivor but in my experience, the burden is still on one or two services to enact the safety element. In terms of getting the outcomes for survivors, that is already done prior to MARAC. It is already done creatively in services. As soon as survivors come to our services, we work to reduce the risk to them.
To give examples, we run Jane’s Place, which is a higher-level complex needs service within Lancashire. The survivors who come through that service are maybe still actively using drugs and alcohol, they may be street homeless when they come to us, and they may have previously offended. We continue to keep them safe while they are in our services. If we were to refer under the basis of the criteria for MARAC, they would go through MARAC consistently and would consistently keep going through a system. I do not believe that that would reduce the impact to their safety.
How we have started to work across Lancashire is to look at more multi-agency intervention around who can bring what to the table in terms of safe outcomes, safer housing options, and what is more appropriate. We look at agencies that can bring that support in rather than one agency saying, “You need to do that. You need to get them safe first”. Absolutely, you need to get the safety in place. However, some of that safety cannot be achieved without support from mental health services or drug and alcohol services. So there is less attendance around the table to be able to get creative and create, in the moment, safety planning that reaches out to survivors and gives them access to that safe accommodation and safe services.
Learning from domestic homicide and from panels shows that where there are really high levels of complexity, agencies can sometimes respond by almost becoming fatigued in being able to support those survivors because they do not really know how to reach survivors and support them. If you can get the right people in the room and around the table—I am not sure whether that is MARAC—you could be a lot more creative to get good levels of intervention but also a really good understanding of why we are there with that survivor and what their story is.
The Chair: Some listeners might have not heard the expression MARAC being used before.
Baroness Neate: Sorry, I should have spelled it out: multi-agency risk assessment conference.
The Chair: Yes. MARAC is a tool, if you like, that is used in most local authorities, bringing organisations together.
Beste Kayalar: We understand that multi-agency working requires understanding of patterns of coercive behaviour, recognising some less visible forms of abuse across multi-agency, recognising intersecting vulnerabilities of the survivors, willingness to look beyond the presenting issues, and understanding the survivors in the context of their life experiences and cultural backgrounds. It requires professional curiosity.
Of course, working together is key but it is about creating a system with a survivor-centred approach, where agencies understand their role and they are confident enough to bring their expertise. It is about shifting the focus from reacting to proacting. Unfortunately, that is not what we see mostly in many boroughs among MARACs. It is about just placing the survivor’s wishes at the centre of the decision-making. Of course, safeguarding is important, but it is about how we can do this alongside the client. It is about consistently holding perpetrators to account across agencies.
For instance, we attended a VAWG forum in Tower Hamlets recently. There was this really productive discussion around the recent DHR review related to Mishti, a 40-year-old woman who died. She was a mother of four. There was extensive agency involvement in her case prior to her death. Almost everybody was involved: police, health services, children’s social care, adult social care, domestic abuse agencies and healthcare. Mishti had multiple vulnerabilities. She had a disability; she suffered from a stroke; she had clinical illnesses; she was suffering from depression and anxiety; there was pregnancy. Despite this, the domestic abuse was constantly underestimated. There were clear indications of post-separation abuse and there were attempts at non-fatal strangulation, but none of it triggered a MARAC referral, unfortunately.
The findings showed that the information shared between the multiple agencies was very fragmented. There was no professional curiosity. There were gaps in council competence across the agencies. Different professionals had a piece of the risk, but they were not aware of the full context of what was going on for her. In this case, we all felt everything was very preventable. A high level of agency involvement did not work in this case, but it could have worked.
The Chair: That is another terrible story. The fact that despite all that you describe she was not considered suitable to be referred to MARAC seems to me extraordinary. Did she just fall between all the stools?
Beste Kayalar: For some reason, we find different MARAC thresholds in different boroughs. There are inconsistencies. Some MARACs are absolutely very responsive. For instance, we are based in Waltham Forest, and the Waltham Forest MARAC is well organised, very responsive and very survivor-centred, but it is hard to say this for every borough. It is sometimes about where the client lives, and that is problematic.
Baroness Neate: That is really interesting, and from Alex as well. You can have so many agencies involved, but it does not necessarily mean that you are actually preventing harm to the survivor.
Jeanie Lynch: Obviously, from the perspective of CoLab, the majority of women we support here around domestic abuse are homeless or living in temporary accommodation and may have other additional needs, such as mental health and associated trauma, and lots and lots of different things. MARAC locally works really well, but across the system there is still a need for improved understanding, particularly for women who are homeless. As I said, sometimes they do not meet those thresholds. Sometimes because they find it difficult to engage or to make appointments, they are somehow not dismissed, but it takes teams such as the one that I manage here to be really assertive in ensuring that the factors that have led to their situation are properly understood. That includes MARAC.
To be honest, it also includes what I would call the more general domestic abuse world. There is such a complexity sometimes in terms of a woman’s situation, which can include all kinds of things, such as physical abuse, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, economic abuse: a whole range of different things. Obviously, there is that whole thing around the fact that not one service can broad-brush and meet everyone’s needs.
One of the most important things about the Domestic Abuse Act in terms of that successful collaboration is it gives us better opportunities to influence across the system, to look at how to improve systems such as MARAC, and how to improve police response and other more generic agency response. We have a new mechanism in Devon called MARM, which was tested out last year—that stands for multi-agency risk management meetings. Alongside the MARAC, it is about bringing people round the table. It is about having the voice of the woman either present in the room or involved through an advocate or an IDVA, which is an independent domestic violence adviser.
The MARM is that place between what I describe as MARAC, in our case, and safeguarding. It tries to bring people round the table to create that creative solution, to try to create that better response so that the likelihood of her being further harmed or victimised is lessened, we hope. For me, in terms of the collaboration and pulling this together, that is fundamental. We knew from before that the traditional approaches were not meeting the needs of the women I am talking about here. Again, that whole local authority duty really has strengthened that for us. It has allowed us to properly test and learn the needs of the women we are working with and to have a different offer moving forward, which we are still learning from. It has been a really useful way forward.
Baroness Neate: That is really interesting, thank you.
Q114 Baroness Porter of Fulwood: Obviously, one of the most significant things the Act did was to make children victims in their own right. Could you just say a little from your perspective about how you see the Act as having helped the situation, specifically as it relates to children on the multi-agency working side? Are there areas where you think there are still challenges? How do you think things could be improved? Beste, you have already mentioned children specifically so would you like to start?
Beste Kayalar: We really welcome the changes recognising children as victims in their own right. In practice this has made a real difference to safeguarding and how professionals understand the impact of abuse on children. It is now also less challenging for us to evidence the harm that children experience when we make safeguarding referrals, and it is easier to explain to social workers and partner agencies that children do not have to experience physical abuse directly to be seriously affected by it. Living with fear, coercive control, constant instability, not knowing what is going to happen and that emotional trauma has a profound impact on children’s well-being, and we are really thankful that this is recognised.
The changes helped us when applying injunctions; it is easier to include children in court orders. There has been also improvement in support services for children, although the provision is still not quite there in relation to emotional well-being support. Importantly, recognising children as victims in their own right helped older children and young people put a language and context to their feelings and experiences so they do not blame themselves. It validates their feelings and what they are living through, and it helps them understand that feelings such as anxiety, fear and anger are understandable: they are trauma responses. That acknowledgement is also very important.
However, the problem we see is that children’s experiences are still approached through blame towards the non-abusive parent, and that non-abusive parent is often the woman. Many mothers we support are treated as responsible for failing to protect their children, and we do not see enough attention paid to perpetrators’ behaviour or to barriers that prevent women from living safely. Sometimes we find that children’s social care responses can be quite punitive rather than supportive. Survivors are scared of making disclosures because they fear losing their children. This is a really valid fear.
I would like to give an example. We had a case, again quite recently, in which a client was experiencing significant abuse from the husband, including severe sexual violence and physical abuse. She had a three-month-old baby. Due to safety concerns for the baby, we had to engage children’s social care. We spent hours speaking with the client, explaining to her why we have to make this referral, what she should expect, and the safeguarding concerns involved. She was extremely frightened because her husband had constantly told her that if she disclosed the abuse, her baby would be removed, she would not be believed, and she would be called crazy. We worked really hard to ensure that she understood, and she finally understood and agreed to the referral.
We made the social services referral. Social services contacted her quite quickly and asked her the reason for the delay in seeking support. She explained her fears, why it took her quite a long time to make the disclosure, and said that she was fearful of losing the baby. The social worker responded by saying that this was a possibility, and the child could indeed be removed if they believed that the baby was at risk. When they start the conversation by saying such a thing, it is to be expected that the client disengaged from the support initially. Luckily, and thankfully, she remained engaged with our service. We were able to take a mediator role, and we communicated her concerns to the social services but we should not be in that position to communicate these very clear concerns. We expect some understanding. It is there already in the Domestic Abuse Act, but it is about implementation again.
The Chair: Beste, that was really interesting. Thank you for sharing the difficult ethical questions that are presented to people working on these issues, and how difficult it is to advise someone to engage with social services yet while feeling that sometimes there might be decisions made that would not be ones the woman would have wanted. I really respect the work that you are doing.
Baroness Porter of Fulwood: Jeanie was just nodding emphatically. I wondered if you had anything you wanted to add to that.
Jeanie Lynch: It just reminded me of a scenario in an early help for children and families setting some years ago, where there would be triage meetings with a new social worker. I will never forget the expression, which was, “She needs to protect those children”. Despite the fact that the woman herself was undergoing domestic abuse, as you have said, Beste, the emphasis was put on her that somehow by staying she was enabling it to happen, without any understanding of that impact across the board in terms of the woman trying to keep both herself and her children safe. I would like to think that things have moved on since then, but it just really struck me in terms of how often and how easy it is to still blame women for any impact on their children moving forward. Thank you for that. It is hard to hear though.
The Chair: Is it not also that social workers working within local authorities’ social services departments are fearful because they have seen the way in which they can be roundly attacked if they do not step in and remove children at an early stage and then something tragic happens? Sometimes there is an overreading of a situation because they are so anxious about being pilloried if they make the wrong decision. So they sometimes make the wrong decision but for the best of reasons.
Jeanie Lynch: Absolutely. I worked in children’s services for a long time and then moved into adult services 10 years ago. The improvements around joining up children’s services and adult services in that trial and transition area have improved significantly, but there is still work to do across the board. Just to give a couple of examples locally, we have children and young people’s IDVAs within Devon Domestic Abuse Alliance, which is able to offer direct support to children and families, and we also have them in Devon County Council children’s services.
There is a specific project funded through the Domestic Abuse Act, which sits with an organisation called Young Devon. That is to support children and young people who are affected by domestic abuse to have their voices heard and to have some access to that therapeutic support, to help them to move forward. When it comes to the long-term impact of this on children and young people, people almost feel that when the situation has ended, or when children and the—usually female—parent have been able to get away from the situation or perpetrator, that is the end of it. However, as we know, this stuff can impact years and years further down the line. From that perspective, there is a good opportunity here to strengthen that across the board with the different parts of the system moving forward.
Alex Atkinson: Supporting children has often been the least stable part of the domestic abuse sector historically. Certainly, Part 4 bringing funding into safe accommodation services to be able to support that front-line support for children, and the recognition of children in their own right, have definitely improved the response from agencies. I would absolutely echo colleagues in the room: what we often see in safe accommodation is survivors who are placed with the responsibility to keep themselves safe; the focus is not placed on the perpetrators’ behaviour and the violence that they are perpetrating towards the woman and children in that relationship. They are almost forced to stay in safe accommodation because if they leave, that will affect the support they receive but also the action that will be taken by statutory agencies.
That makes it really difficult to build the trust of survivors coming into our services. First and foremost, we are a safeguarding agency, and we are there to safeguard people, but it is difficult to build that trust when they feel that you are watching what they are doing in the services. I feel that now we have really well-funded children’s services within the refuge, but there are still missing elements of that more therapeutic support around the impact that children experience.
One of the key things is that sometimes these services operate separately. Mum is an adult. We will support your children. Our focus is on safeguarding children and often the survivor gets lost in that. We often see situations where survivors have lost the children as a result of horrendous domestic abuse perpetrated against them. They find it really difficult to escape the cycle because of the absolute fear they face around that. They have lost the children, and no action has been taken against the perpetrator for that behaviour. So those children are removed, causing further trauma, and it continues. In some services we operate with, the most vulnerable women will not have the children with them.
Sometimes it can be a constant cycle of abuse, and we are still seeing that across the services. We still feel that sometimes survivors are forced to stay in. Once they are in our services, the multi-agency needs to continue and to support them to make sure that they can sustain their stay and feel safe enough to leave. What we are in effect asking a survivor to do is: leave your house, pack everything up, leave your family, leave your community network, leave all that behind, and come and stay in safe accommodation with no action taken against the person who is perpetrating the violence.
Although there are lots of benefits of the funding in safe accommodation, there is not the same level of statutory funding for DA services in the community. Again, it can be patchwork funding. We offer children’s services across through the DASSL partnership, but it is limited and often overrun with referrals into our services so that we can reach those children, so the cycle continues. We still experience that across our services.
Q115 Baroness Hussein-Ece: Thank you very much for all the contributions so far; they are extremely useful and helpful to us. In your experience, how well do you think the Act is in fact operating in the way it is guiding or signposting women and victims to multi-agency tools and support, particularly for minoritised victims and survivors? Or, rather than multi-agency support, is there a tendency to go straight to specialist services? How well is it all working together in terms of the things that were specifically put in place in the Act to ensure there was a multi-agency approach? How well do you think that is working for minoritised victims and women survivors? I will go to Beste first because she has talked specifically about minoritised victims and women.
Beste Kayalar: Many of the women we support experience multiple barriers alongside the abuse they suffer, including language barriers, insecure immigration status, no recourse to public funds, poverty, destitution, isolation and cultural pressures. The issues often sit alongside a very high level of trauma. Of course, one of the biggest challenges we continue to see is the separation of immigration control and safeguarding. At the moment, access to safe housing and accommodation—access to safety in general—is very heavily linked to the immigration status of the woman and her entitlement to public funds. This means that some women are unfortunately excluded from mainstream support, such as accessing a refuge, local authority housing support or financial assistance. When they want to access immigration advice, again, it is increasingly difficult. There are delays and uncertainty.
I will give an example. These examples can be quite important in explaining what is really going on, on the front line. We supported a client I will refer to as SK. She was a migrant survivor on a spousal visa, with no recourse to public funds. She experienced a high level of domestic abuse from the perpetrator husband. She experienced threats to kill and sexual coercion. Following a really serious incident, the police were involved and the client and her children were put in hotel accommodation for one night. Despite the threats to kill and very serious concerns, she was later advised to return to the perpetrator’s home because she had nowhere to go.
We requested Section 17 support the next day but received very poor communication from social care. We attended a professional meeting where there were professionals from social care and the school. It was really shocking to see some examples of victim blaming there. There was really a lack of understanding of the barriers the client was facing. For instance, she used to work as a cleaner, and she was told to clean more, work more hours, move to northern England, and to stop sending money to her family in her country of origin, Ghana. She was already working really long hours and trying to keep herself and her children safe. It left us questioning whether the same comments would have been made to maybe a non-migrant woman in very similar circumstances, and whether they would ask her to stop sending money to her mother.
She was granted MVDAC. We were then able to seek local authority support, but there was a months-long dispute between two local authorities over responsibility so this left them in absolute uncertainty. Both councils were aware of the risk and their vulnerabilities, but they each said that the other was responsible. They denied the support, and they were pointing at each other for who is responsible. We had to take legal action before the accommodation was finally secured.
We also see gaps around culturally appropriate support. Access to interpreters is still very inconsistent. For example, we recently supported a Turkish-speaking client who has gone through an extremely stressful child protection process, which could have been prevented. She explained to us in her own language that she was not provided with an interpreter when initially she disclosed the abuse to the agency, and the risk was incorrectly assessed. In reality, she had already separated from the perpetrator and the level of the risk had already been reduced. However, the incorrect assessment because of the lack of interpretation triggered a safeguarding process and ultimately a MARAC referral, a child protection conference and inquiries.
That is one thing. I also wanted to mention that at the moment, MARACs are great but they are more about the high-risk cases. There is little multi-agency input for the medium and low-risk cases. We know that domestic abuse, and especially harmful practices, can easily escalate. Some multi-agency response that can also fully understand these dynamics would also be much appreciated for medium to low-risk cases.
The Chair: Beste, thank you. Shaminder, is there something you wanted to say?
Shaminder Ubhi: Yes, if you would not mind. One of the things that has been useful for us through the Act as a led by and for organisation as regards the funding tier 1 authority in London is the GLA. Through the GLA we were able to secure additional funding for our refuge provision, which enabled us to develop second-stage accommodation and further develop crisis accommodation.
There are issues, though, around how without the funding, the work that Beste is talking about is so hard to deliver because capacity is a huge issue for us within our services, especially when often we become the first port of call. Especially when it comes to immigration issues—women with no recourse to public funds—we generally are the first ones to be contacted. Although funding has improved, there needs to be—
The Chair: It remains an issue; I can get that. Shaminder, the next question is going to be about what local authorities can do around accommodation-based support, so there may be something you have to say on that. I am very mindful that we really are hitting the bell. Baroness Hussein-Ece, is there anybody else you would like to ask?
Baroness Hussein-Ece: Yes, if either Alex or Jeanie have anything further, just a few points.
The Chair: I mean something that is different and not a repetition.
Baroness Hussein-Ece: It sounds like there is a lot of focus on specialist services that rely on ad hoc funding having to pick up a lot of this work and not getting the multi-agency support that they should.
Jeanie Lynch: I just want to reinforce that. In terms of thinking about minoritised victims and survivors and support for them, to fund specialist services is really important so that people get the appropriate type of help. However, what can happen then—certainly in a county like Devon—is that the pressure that is put on those organisations is absolutely huge. They almost become siloed within the bigger system. There is an expectation that rather than broader support services being able to offer support, they send people to a particular service, which is great if you have the resource and support to be able to back that up. We need to be much more cross-system and cross-sector and to look at structural and cultural shifts to be able to make that happen.
Alex Atkinson: I echo that—I am just conscious of time.
The Chair: Can I then take us to this issue of accommodation-based support?
Q116 Baroness Hyde of Bemerton: This has come up a bit already. Part 4 of the Act is around the provisions for local authority support, including that duty to deliver “Accommodation-based support” for victims and their children. I am going to come to you first, Alex, because you have spoken a little already about this in one of your other answers. Is there anything else you wanted to add about how well the intentions of that provision have been implemented and how the implementation in particular could be improved?
Alex Atkinson: It has been vital for us, and we worked really creatively with Lancashire. As providers, we were brought in around consultation and recognition of what was needed across the county. The diverse provision that we provide across Lancashire means that we can reach some of the most vulnerable people. We can meet people where they are at, in terms of their needs coming into the services. We are able to accommodate only around 27% of the referrals that come into our services, so there is still a massive need for safe accommodation.
One of the things that the Act did is strengthen that and enable that funding for local authorities to be able to carry out their statutory provision. There is a bit of a lack of guidance for local authorities on how many units they should be providing. In some areas, that has not changed. There should be some more guidance on how that funding is ring-fenced to make sure that it is spent on what it should be spent on for safe accommodation, and that there is the right number of units given for that area because, as you know, with safe accommodation, people move across. Sometimes there can be almost protectiveness of some spaces because we navigate across a lot of different local authorities. Some have a great provision, but it is very much once somebody is in that they are in, and those services are full very quickly.
I would also say that the move-on options and the lack of safe, appropriate move-on can be an issue. We have worked creatively with Calico to do a pilot around some dedicated move-on provision, which enabled movement through our safe accommodation.
The Chair: That is moving from the emergency provision on to something longer term.
Alex Atkinson: In some local authorities, they can be in safe accommodation for in excess of 12 months. That is a long time for a family to be displaced, to not be able to move forward and recover from the domestic abuse and experience living in safe accommodation. We need appropriate move-on that is timely and which enables people to get appropriate accommodation that is safe in the community so they are able to recover from that. Often survivors can stay in refuge longer, and that can impact their recovery in the services. Move-on is definitely important, and we need safe, appropriate accommodation for that in the housing strategies of local authorities for prioritising survivors. However, I would always say there are capacity pressures. We turn away a lot of survivors because we have a lack of space. Sometimes that is a lottery.
The Chair: Your message is very clear. I should just say that we are running out of time. I would imagine that this is something where you all share the same view. I do not imagine there is very much difference, but if there is anything within 30 seconds that anybody wants to say, Jeanie or Beste, I really do not have the time available to ask you for more detail. I have one more question, which Baroness Gohir is going to ask, if you do not mind.
Q117 Baroness Gohir: Mine is on funding, which you have been touching on already. What are the issues for funding for local authorities and agencies involved in multi-agency working? I am particularly interested in, for example, how inclusive are the practices and specialist organisations. Are any specialisms left behind? How long in advance do you know you could be running out of funding? Is it last minute? Is it multiyear? I will start off with you, Alex.
The Chair: I am going to take the chair’s initiative and say that it really has to be a quick blast, blast, blast. Three points each.
Alex Atkinson: Across Lancashire, the commission is three plus two, plus two. It is a potential of eight years funding. That is fantastic for us in terms of being consistent. In other areas, we have longer-term commissions. It was patchwork previously, but the Part 4 provision has enabled longer commissions. For us, it is essential that we need that longer-term stability to be able to retain our staff, build our services and reach survivors effectively.
The Chair: Shaminder has her hand up. She is the CEO, and she probably deals with the money more. Shaminder should be the person who answers this.
Shaminder Ubhi: Yes, I agree. The by and for sector has been chronically underfunded for many years. The things that work are the tier-1 duties to fund supported accommodation. In London, we had the benefit of ring-fenced funding for the by and for sector, but that created a huge amount of competition and it was oversubscribed. The demand exceeds the funding that is available.
The only other thing I would say is that in terms of funding, it is important that we look at the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 and the implementation of that in conjunction with this because that has a major impact on refuge provision and how that is provided going forward. I know at the moment that because of the Domestic Abuse Act, the licensing arrangements have been exempted for refuge providers but only commissioned refuge providers. There are a lot of Black and minoritised refuge providers that are not commissioned. There is work to do on that side in terms of joint working.
Jeanie Lynch: I will just be quick. For me, the key thing around the funding is that there are new statutory duties, but in terms of that equivalent long-term funding, it is quite a patchwork. We have a good long-term situation in Devon so that is really helpful. We need to think about accommodation-based funding versus community-based services and that longevity, and, as we have already touched on today, funding for specialist by and for services. For me, one of the key things—I really just want to end on this—is around workforce retention, support and recruitment. This is hard work on people, and the impact of dealing with increasing abuse, violence and trauma on the workforce across the board cannot be underestimated.
The Chair: I am sure that is true, absolutely. Beste, is there anything short to add? It has to be short, I am afraid.
Beste Kayalar: Shaminder covered all the key points there.
The Chair: Thank you. We have been really fortunate in having such a terrific set of experts before us, and I thank you all. It really has been useful. I just wanted to give you a final message, which is that if there is anything else that occurs to you that you think would be useful for us to hear, please send it through and it will be added to the evidence that you have provided us with. I now am going to call this session to a close for a pause and suspend the hearings because we have some witnesses to come in for the second panel. Thank you all; it was really, really useful to us.
