New standards for domestic abuse perpetrator interventions issued by Home Office

It said the seven standards and corresponding policy and practice guidelines have been developed in consultation with practitioners, policy makers, academics, victim-survivors and perpetrators following a “substantial project delivered in a very short timeframe”.

It is intended that they will underpin the development of safe and effective domestic abuse perpetrator interventions across England and Wales.

“The work did reveal some serious gaps in the evidence base, especially in terms of how current responses can be extended to cover all forms of domestic abuse and to diversity within perpetrators,” said the Home Office.

“In addition, scaling up provision faces the challenge of recruitment, this is a specialist area that needs capacity building through both a workforce development plan and agreed training standards.

“Meeting this challenge would also offer an opportunity to expand the pool of staff who belong to currently underserved communities.”

The report – written by Professor Nicole Westmarland at the Durham University Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse, and Professor Liz Kelly of the London Metropolitan University Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit – was commissioned by the Home Office to develop evidence-based standards for interventions with perpetrators of domestic abuse.

Based on the literature review and practice-based evidence, the seven standards that have been developed are:

1. The priority outcome for perpetrator interventions should be enhanced safety and freedom (space for action) for all victim-survivors, including children;
2. Interventions should be located within a wider coordinated community response in which all agencies share the responsibility of holding abusive behaviour in view, enabling change in perpetrators and enhancing the safety and freedom (space for action) of victim-survivors and their children;
3. Interventions should hold perpetrators to account, while treating them with respect, and offering opportunities to choose to change;
4. The right intervention should be offered to the right people at the right time;
5. Interventions should be delivered equitably with respect to protected characteristics that intersect and overlap;
6. Interventions should be delivered by staff who are skilled and supported in responding to domestic abuse; and
7. Monitoring and evaluation of interventions should take place to improve practice and expand the knowledge base.

The standards were commissioned by the Home Office and follow the definition enshrined in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.

“This means that they include not only intimate partner violence and abuse, but also other violence and abuse where the victim and perpetrator are aged 16 or over and are personally connected,” said the Home Office. “Hence, adolescent/adult child to parent violence or abuse (sometimes called inter-generational abuse) is included but child (under age 16) to parent abuse is not: practice is emerging in this area currently.

“While some forms of ‘honour’ based violence and abuse are also included, there is currently very little research or practice-based evidence on perpetrator interventions in this arena, including work with multiple perpetrators.”

The Home Office said the second task was to develop a ‘typology’ of interventions in a field which, until relatively recently, was limited to behaviour change group work with perpetrators of intimate partner violence and abuse (known as domestic violence perpetrator programmes (DVPPs) or domestic abuse perpetrator programmes (DAPPs)).

It added that systems change work, such as Safe and Together, Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) and Multi-Agency Tasking and Coordination (MATAC), was excluded as these may result in interventions that are covered in the standards, but which are not in themselves direct perpetrator interventions.

Interventions that are not specific to domestic abuse perpetrators, for example being arrested by the police, were also excluded, said the Home Office. Currently, the scope does not include interventions delivered by HM Prison and Probation Service.

The typology of interventions that the standards cover are:

Help-seeking – This covers interventions established for people to talk about their behaviour at an early point. They are usually brief interventions that operate as a pathway into other responses, for example, the Respect Phoneline.

Early responses – This covers work that is a step before long term behaviour change – it may involve group or one to one work to provide information about domestic abuse, and/or to motivate perpetrators to consider a behaviour change programme. These are usually shorter-term interventions, for example, Change that Lasts Early Awareness Raising (CLEAR) and Cautioning and Relationship Abuse (CARA).

Behaviour change work – For those where abuse has become an ongoing pattern, longer-term interventions (the standards propose at least 22 weeks) offer the possibility of rethinking and changing how they relate to others. Often combined with risk and needs assessment, individual one-to-one work where needed, case management and multi- agency processes, for example, DAPPs.

Intensive multi-agency case management – ‘High harm, high risk’ cases identified by police on the basis of repeat call outs and/or multiple victims backed up by the coordination of agency responses.

“It was known from the outset that the evidence base on interventions was weak in many areas,” said the Home Office.

“First, a rapid evidence assessment was conducted to capture academic literature. We also reviewed other sets of standards from around the world. This was supplemented by practice-based evidence through a series of 16 roundtables attended by 297 practitioners and policy makers.

“A small number of victim-survivors and perpetrators who had accessed interventions were also consulted.

“It was also important to recognise that there are three existing sets of accreditation standards in the UK that these [standards] needed to complement rather than be in tension with: they are not a replacement for accreditation, but rather a higher-level set of principles that can be applied when making decisions about commissioning.

“Given the evidence base is still developing they should be revisited as the knowledge base expands.”

Full details on each of the seven standards with linked practice guidelines can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/standards-for-domestic-abuse-perpetrator-interventions/standards-for-domestic-abuse-perpetrator-interventions-accessible