Tackling domestic abuse and violence against women and girls needs early prevention: it must start with all professionals

This article is informed by our learning from the ‘DFJ Trailblazers: Reducing Time to Family Court’ pilot programme, with valuable input from the national charity Pause, Durham County Council, and mothers who helped to create ‘case stories’ of their own experiences in care proceedings. We are grateful for their time and input to this important issue.

It is important to note that people of any gender can be victims of DV; for awareness, this article particularly centres on the experience of women who have been victims of DV.

Last year, as part of the Department for Education’s pilot programme ‘DFJ Trailblazers: Reducing Time to Family Court’, our team explored the real-world impact of delayed care proceedings by speaking to eight mums with support from the Cafcass Family Forum and Pause.

Amidst each mother’s unique experience care proceedings was a common theme: the presence, and impact, of domestic abuse.

Domestic abuse is pervasive, but its scale is hugely underestimated – often as a result of it historically being minimised as ‘private family matter’ and misunderstood to only extend to physical violence. An estimated 2.3 million people in England and Wales aged 16 years and over experienced domestic abuse between April 2023 and March 2024, and 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse in their lifetimes. In 2020, 42.6% of incidents involving serious harm to children involved domestic abuse and violence – and family courts are increasingly accepting that domestic abuse will almost certainly be involved in a significant majority of cases.

If the family justice system aims to protect children and families from harm, and wants to ensure that families can safely stay together and avoid court proceedings wherever possible, stronger and more effective early responses to domestic abuse must now be a central consideration.

There are two key priorities to making this happen:

1. We must empower family justice professionals to better understand domestic abuse to respond to it confidently and effectively

2. Central government must have a stronger evidence base of ‘what works’ in tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) and domestic abuse.

We will be focusing on the latter in an upcoming article.

Building better understanding

Professionals across family justice must be able to better recognise and understand different kinds of domestic abuse – with many that we have spoken to having already identified it as a critical gap in their own knowledge and skillsets.

One mother shared that her ex-partner delayed hearings by demanding repeated drug and alcohol tests for her while refusing to undergo testing himself, despite his own known substance abuse issues. When she raised this concern in court, she felt judged and criticised for suggesting this was a ‘tactic’ to prolong the process.

Another mother shared how her ex-partner repeatedly showed up at the accommodation she was placed in with their child, despite deliberately being placed in a different town with instructions to prevent contact. As she was worried what would happen if she refused to let him see the child, she allowed the visits to continue and didn’t raise it with social workers. She then felt she was heavily judged and criticised when social workers learned he had been visiting – including that she had “prioritised her own needs above the child’s by continuing the relationship”. She felt that her experience of abuse was minimised, which eroded her trust in the family court system as it added months to proceedings.

To mitigate situations like these, it is essential that everyone working in family justice – including the judiciary and magistrates, lawyers and solicitors, social workers and Cafcass Guardians, the police and healthcare staff – receives consistent and enhanced training on types of domestic abuse, the nuances of coercive control, and the impact of abuse on adults and children. This would give professionals the confidence to recognise different and more subtle signs of abuse, put in place the right support early, and respond to abuse respectfully and supportively.

There are already promising models that show how trauma-informed training, and workforce development focused on domestic abuse, can have a positive impact.

Durham County Council (DCC) has implemented a robust, trauma-informed approach to social care workforce development, with a particular focus on addressing coercive control and domestic abuse.

Central to this is the integration of lived experiences - especially those of women in County Durham - into training and practice. DCC collaborated with Open Clasp Theatre Company to deliver impactful training through plays like Lasagna, which explores the realities of child removal and coercive control, and is now a key part of domestic abuse training for staff at all levels. This initiative is reinforced through updated toolkits, a practitioner’s guide, and ongoing reflective sessions, with many staff attending multiple times and gaining new insights each time.

With around 5,000 course attendances recorded, the approach has led to more empathetic and accurate documentation in care plans, emphasising perpetrator accountability and aligning with domestic homicide risk mapping. DCC’s efforts have also earned them White Ribbon accreditation for their commitment to ending male violence against women.

Despite there being brilliant examples of innovative approaches at a local level for addressing VAWG and domestic abuse, this can’t be left to a postcode lottery. We know – as outlined by the National Audit Office in their 2025 report – that there is a lack of understanding from the centre of what strategies and interventions work to reduce violence against women and girls (VAWG) and domestic abuse. Without this understanding, the ‘patchwork of provision’, as described by Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs, will only persist.

To make a tangible difference, more must be done to share these initiatives, and spread good practice more widely. The Spending Review provides a real opportunity to make a start on this.

For more information on the Mutual Ventures' work on the DFJ Trailblazers project see the project case study here or contact Morgan Nasir-Finlayson at morgan.nasir-finlayson@mutualventures.co.uk