CC(3) DA16

Communities and Culture Committee

Scrutiny Inquiry : Domestic Abuse

Response from Powys Domestic Abuse Forum (PDAF)

PDAF strategy

The PDAF strategy 2008-2010 is based on the All Wales Strategy 'Tackling Abuse’ and the PDAF action plan reflects the objectives of the strategy.

Support for victims in Powys

PDAF recognises that many other voluntary organisations offer support in some form or another. The principal voluntary sector support agencies are:

Powys Division of Dyfed Powys Police have been proactive in domestic violence actions and initiatives in the county for many years and have been active members of PDAF from the outset. The introduction of the Domestic Abuse Risk Assessment Group (DARAG) is just one example of a victim-focused approach to their work.

Her Majesty’s Courts Service (HMCS) makes little or no special provision for dealing with victims of or witnesses to domestic violence when they appear at court. This is further compounded by the shocking inadequacy of court facilities at Welshpool Magistrate’s court (for all witnesses) in contrast to the excellent 21^st century facilities at Brecon. Llandrindod Wells court is tolerable.

The provision of a single specialist domestic violence court in Powys will be of limited value if it means victims and witnesses have to travel for up to 2 hours to attend court. The number of cases in each area does not warrant an SDVC in each shire.  PDAF therefore recommends a specialist court focussed on its members and the enhanced service it offers rather than its location.  The provision of Domestic Abuse training for the legal profession and Magistrates would greatly benefit everyone’s understanding in such cases.

Powys Local Health Board

PDAF recognises the work Powys Local Health Board has undertaken in the consistent and far reaching training of personnel in New Pathways produced as part of a project funded by the Home Office All Wales Women’s Health Network with acknowledgements to the All Wales Antenatal Routine Enquiry Networking Group.  This has worked well in Powys with a high percentage of antenatal patients being asked about domestic abuse on a routine basis.

Powys Community Safety Partnership

The Powys CSP has put in place structures to enabe multi agency activity working to the overall aim of keeping Powys string, safe and secure and contributing to improving the quality of life for all those who work, live and visit the County.

As outlined in the All Wales Domestic Abuse Strategy, developing domestic violence strategies should be an integral part of the existing Community Safety Partnership Plans. A strategic framework requires specific strategies and plans to tackle, monitor and evaluate domestic violence.

Domestic Abuse remains a priority of the Powys CSP though is not deemed one of the four key areas for action due to the decrease in incident reporting figures as supplied by the Police. The PDAF is now aligned with the Substance Misuse Working Group.

Counselling in Powys project

PDAF piloted a six-month project between October 2007 and April 2008 which made free counselling available to victims of domestic abuse.  This project is now almost complete and the feedback to date has been extremely positive.  Funding is now required to maintain and develop this facility.  There is already a waiting list of women who feel they would benefit from such a service.

Children who have been affected by domestic abuse, directly or indirectly, should be given the benefit of engaging with counsellors should they wish to do so.  This needs to be a high priority.

The Forum will endeavour to thie in with the CYPP Single Plan and other organisations to ensure that appropriate and needed services are provided; and that facilities are not duplicated but enhanced.

SARCs (Sexual Abuse Referral Centres)

Survivors of sexual abuse in Powys cannot easily access facilities such as - the nearest is over an hour and a half away from the centre of Powys.  Due to the number of adult assaults in the county not being high enough to warrant a SARC specifically for adults, it would be preferable to have funding for a SARC that would accept any victim of sexual abuse, adult or child.   Home Office funding is generally aimed at adult-only facilities.

A recent Stakeholder Workshop looking into Medical Examination facilities in Wales for children who have been sexually abused showed that Mid and West Wales have no service in Powys or Ceredigion.  The report states that the Police and LHBs need to recognise what service is required and to come together to agree how to commission a service.  Multi-agency training could be provided to the non specialist staff to improve the referral process for medical examinations.

This needs to be a priority.

Perpetrators

The IDAP programme operates in Powys and there is, in place, a specialist women support officer employed by Tai-Hafan to support the victims/partners of perpetrators engaged in the programme.

There is a Dyfed-Powys bid in the pipeline for Lottery funding to support the provision of a 'Duluth model’ Perpetrator programme in each county, which will include the training of five workers, capable of delivering the programme in their respective counties, a Safety Intervention Officer, a Project Manager to oversee the set up of the project and funding for the acquisition and running of a Perpetrator safe house within the region.  This will be a much improved facility for Powys as there is no such facility presently available.

Other Options

The Freedom Programme for Men has been delivered in other regions very successfully.  The possibility of staging a weekend course for men in the county is being explored, though this would mean sourcing adequate funding.  The Course would be open to all men, victims, perpetrators and professionals, as no personal circumstances are shared or discussed at the sessions.  

The Course aims to change attitudes rather than behaviour.

Raising awareness

There are, at present, no school programmes being input into schools in Powys, except in one school in Ystradgynlais that benefited from work done by the All Wales School Liaison Worker, Rosalyn James.  The PDAF Co-ordinator has presented a case to the Secondary Head Teachers and is actively seeking solutions to the lack of DA awareness raising in schools.  The PDAF Co-ordinator also sits on the Bullying Strategy Group and will seek to promote both initiatives.

Awareness raising material has been distributed to the Coleg Powys sites throughout the county and further material has been put into the 'Radical Bus’ and 'MAYP’ which engage with schools in the county.

Further awareness raising events and projects have been undertaken by the DA Forum with varying levels of success.  The Forum has no assured funding from any quarter to carry out the activities highlighted in the Action Plan.  All funding needs to be sourced from external streams.

The Forum is implementing a rolling programme of training sessions available for all professionals, mainly targeting local authority personnel but accessible, free of charge, to all organisations.  It is hoped that local businesses will take advantage of the training, Young Farmers Clubs, and other youth organisations in the county.  This training will be funded through the Powys County Council and the DA Providers in the county.

Targets, data collection and information sharing

There is a risk that targets can be misinterpreted or meaningless. Is a reduction in reporting of domestic violence good? What does a decrease in repeat victimisation say? Low overall totals can also distort percentages … a 66% increase might mean an increase from 3 to 5.  The figures collected by the Police are just the tip of the iceberg and there is no consistent amalgamation of figures collected by the various providers and other agencies dealing with DA.  The figures from the All Wales DA Helpline are recorded for each county but this is not then related to engagement with support agencies.

The recent CSP/DA Co-ordinator conference in Llandrindod Wells highlighted the need for minimum standards for DA Forums and the need to implement SMART KPIs for DA reporting.  This would prove almost impossible within Powys at the present time as there is no system for consistently recording the way DA is dealt with.  Police incidents do not show if support is required ongoing, there is no evidence to show how many Powys residents seek refuge in other counties, there is no evidence to show how many DA cases actually go to court or the conviction/sentence, there is no evidence of how many people are admitted to hospital as a result of DA (clinical causes are recorded only).

The collection and analysis of DA data is imperative to the future of Domestic Abuse service planning.  Various domestic abuse forums in the UK have purchased bespoke programs and are beginning to set up data collection processes.  Other forums, such as Powys, do not have the funding to enable them to implement similar systems.  There was discussion around an All Wales data collection program but this has not been forthcoming and areas need to take action sooner rather than later.  The programs such as Paloma are excellent to capture and track cases of very high risk across a number of agencies.  However there is an urgent need to record and track those victims of low, medium and high risk to ensure that any escalation in risk is avoided and that adequate and appropriate support is implemented as early as possible, and this could be done through basic Excel or Access programs.  A detailed and effective data collection system would capture information that could give robust statistical evidence of the rates and nature of domestic abuse, including incidences of murder, conviction rates, geographical trends etc.  The system would inevitably depend on the co-operation of all agencies and would necessitate a robust information sharing protocol, with additional consent obtained from those victims below very high risk.

The Forum is forming a task group to formulate a way of collecting and collating information in order to produce meaningful reports.

A sustainable, coordinated approach to funding

Funding for Domestic Abuse Forums should be mainstreamed to allow partnerships to implement programmes of awareness raising etc, without the necessity to fund raise before any activity can take place.  Tackling Substance Misuse warrants a substantial budget, as does Anti-social Behaviour, both circumstances being underpinned to a significant amount by domestic abuse and its long term effects.

Domestic Abuse needs to be recognised as an equally worthy recipient of main stream funding - quoting Mr. Justice Coleridge 'Judges are witnessing a "never-ending carnival” of human misery and almost all of society’s social ills can be traced back to the collapse in family stability.’

PDAF is defined as a semi-autonomous sub-group of the Community Safety Partnership. The forum only exists as the sum of its members and it cannot therefore be subsumed into any statutory entity (for most voluntary organisation members this would conflict with charity law).

There is genuine benefit in a healthy tension between the Forum and statutory bodies. By definition, a statutory body has legal duties and once these are met it has no further statutory obligations (box ticked, job done, target met). The benefit of a semi-autonomous group is that it can say "you’ve met your statutory duties, but that still leaves service users, victims, survivors with unmet needs and we’re going to do something about it … why not join us”.

Children and Young People

Prevention and Early Intervention is the key to tackling the problem of domestic abuse.  The effects of family conflict on children within households affected by DA are devastating and long lasting.  Whilst there is no 'one size fits all’ solution, the Webster-Stratton system is one approach to acceptable behaviour that could be adopted countywide.  A three pronged approach - Parents, Teachers and Children - would need to be implemented simultaneously, at present only the Parenting System has been adopted and is being delivered in the county.  The only way we can stop the cycle of abuse is by enabling children to realise that certain behaviours are unacceptable and that there can be negative outcomes as a result; and by encouraging good behaviour through praise and reward.  All actions and behaviours impact on others and whilst we have the right to do almost anything that is legal, those actions carry with them responsibilities.  Such interventions would work equally successfully for Bullying strategies.