Episode five - Doncaster Children’s Services Trust

Dr. Jess Wild from Research in Practice discusses Doncaster Children’s Services Trust’s approach to domestic abuse with Alicia Lee, who manages a small specialist team that works with the whole family as a response to domestic abuse. Alicia gives a sense of how the council approach work with families where there is a perpetrator of domestic abuse.

Talking points

• The challenges of seeking to do something differently and the reassurance of hearing that other people are sharing the same challenges.
• Working with all members of the family via Doncaster’s Growing Futures model.
• Evaluations of the model.
• Using Johnson’s typologies to better understand the nature of the domestic abuse, not as a diagnostic tool, but rather as a tool for identifying the most appropriate intervention
• Understanding and applying the concept of intersectionality to practice.
• Engaging more with people causing harm, and exploring the links with perpetrators’ experiences of shame (and acknowledging that it is not everybody).
• Thinking about how shame links to poverty and how these can intersect with experiences of domestic abuse.
• Challenging the re-victimisation of victim-survivors through the children’s social care process.
• Trauma and trauma bonding and how this informs mothers’ behaviours and their engagement with children’s social care measures.
• Whole family approach so that families feel able to disclose incidents and seek help.

Challenges and opportunities

• Impact of COVID-19 and of lockdowns on rates of DVA.
• The challenges of short term funding for new provisions or approaches.
• The new Domestic Abuse (DA) Act 2021 and the impact this may have for embedding longer-term change.