Service offer in the City for Domestic Violence & Abuse

As part of the strategic review a seven typologies campaign was developed to reach different groups of people with communications relevant to them. One of these approaches involved working with young people with lived experience of DV&A to co-design a campaign targeted to them and their peers.

• The animations are available on MCC’s You Tube site – the six animations can be found together in one playlist  www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLATXabx7aJUqpbR0xFBBUOX_v5WTATVEs

Services often focus primarily on the physical and emotional danger resulting from incidents of violence; however the reality is that domestic violence perpetrators hurt children in many ways. Whether it is through their choice to expose children to their violence against another parent; through direct physical maltreatment; or by using a child as a weapon against the other parent, domestic violence perpetrators create safety and risk concerns for children.

A domestic violence perpetrator can harm children by interfering with another parent’s substance abuse recovery or sabotaging a child’s mental health treatment. At the extreme of the spectrum, domestic violence perpetrators’ patterns of coercive control are frequently present in cases that end in a critical incident or child death.

While some children appear to be resilient and show no symptoms, many children who are exposed to a parent’s violent behaviour display externalising and internalising behaviours including aggression, anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder, educational and social problems and long term adjustment issues.

Children who are exposed to domestic abuse are at risk of serious emotional, psychological and physical harm. In particular, there is growing evidence that trauma resulting from childhood exposure to domestic abuse can lead to insecure and disorganised attachment patterns, adolescent delinquency and a trajectory of dysfunction in adulthood including violence, addiction and mental illness.

From a child welfare perspective, the existence of clear evidence that there is inter-generational transmission of domestic abuse highlights a potential risk. Children who are born to parents who were exposed to domestic abuse as children are vulnerable to being exposed to domestic abuse themselves. Researchers have estimated that approximately 30% of children who have witnessed domestic abuse between parents go on to become violent or victims of abuse in their adult relationships.

For a child’s point of view, when they have been exposed to domestic violence and abuse they need to feel safety, have access to stability and to be able to talk about what happened so that can make sense of their world.

The Safe and Together model is an approach designed to improve practice and how services work together with families where there is domestic abuse and concerns about children and young people. It helps practitioners to partner with domestic abuse victims and engage with people who have committed domestic abuse to enhance the safety and well being of children and young people.

The model is based on research evidence and has been found to be effective when it has been put into practice in parts of the USA.

The Manchester Safe and Together launch introduced the model to practitioners from a range of agencies across Manchester. Practitioners will be trained as champions of the model and will use Safe and Together tools when working with families and also provide support and advice to other workers on domestic abuse.

Resources:

• Visit the website safeandtogetherinstitute.com
• David Mandel, the creator of the Safe & Together model, describes the importance of achieving domestic violence skills and competencies in order to achieve the mission of child welfare and child serving professionals on Youtube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=0c_fyEgpaQ4