1. Paula Harding Independent Domestic Homicide Review Chair
Safeguarding Adult Review or Domestic Homicide Review Making Change Happen
Paula Harding
Independent Domestic Homicide Review Chair

2. Aims To consider the inter-relationship between:
Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHR) and Safeguarding Adult Reviews (SAR)
domestic abuse and safeguarding adults
To share some findings from DHRs relating to vulnerable adults
Standing Together & Home Office research
To illustrate how reviews can lead to strategy and action
Birmingham DHRs and Birmingham Domestic Abuse Prevention Strategy

3. Inter-relationship between SARs and DHRs
Purpose
PREVENT FUTURE HARM
Shared, statutory, multi-agency responsibilities for finding out, learning and acting on that learning
Circumstances
Death; abuse or neglect
Family and inter-generational
Examining
Spotlight on past to illuminate the future
Individually and in partnership
Principle
learning not blaming
Families are intrinsic to our understanding
Community Safety Partnership and Safeguarding Adult Boards
mostly same organisations
Difference of language: domestic abuse and safeguarding adults

4. Making the connections between adult safeguarding and domestic abuse
Are we talking the same language?
What might be the additional impacts of domestic abuse on people with care and support needs?

5. Additional Impact of domestic abuse on vulnerable women
Research on disabled women (LGA & ADASS, 2015) shows that being disabled strongly affects the nature, extent and impact of abuse.
Twice as likely to be abused
Increased powerlessness, dependency and isolation
Increased shame and made to feel disability is to blame
Humiliation and belittling
Abusers deliberately emphasise and reinforce dependency as a way of asserting and maintaining control
Higher incidence of sexual abuse
Greater opportunity to abuse as carer

6. Findings from Familial DHRs Standing Together & Liz Kelly & Nicola Sharp-Jeffs 2016 Home Office 2016 Homicide Index April 2003-March 2016
Who kills?
88.4% male perpetrators
Mostly with mental illness
32% intoxicated at time of offence (2*rate all homicides)
25% perpetrator was carer (London)
Who is killed
Parent carers
Mostly women
69% mothers killed with sharp implement
50% victims disabled (London)
***Caution*** mixing data*** small numbers***death of research***

7. Findings from Familial DHRs Standing Together & Liz Kelly & Nicola Sharp-Jeffs 2016 Home Office 2016
GP has a significant role
Missed opportunities +50%
Mental Health & Substance Misuse Services
Focus on the individual service user’s needs not threat
Missed coercive control
Missed assessing carer’s needs
Adult Social Care
Made assumptions about age and missed domestic abuse beneath health and support needs

8. Review to Strategy Findings from Birmingham DHRs. We need to:
Understand the whole experience of domestic abuse
not a series of individual and violent incidents: coercive control
Stop blaming the victim
understand the safety strategies that are being used and respond to the threat and control which the victim and family faces.
Understand and respond to the threat that an abuser poses to those close to him
Stop abusers being invisible. Don’t collude.
Control and manage their behaviour
Always to identify and ask about domestic abuse
and keep asking until it becomes routine for us and safe for victims to tell us
Overcome barriers. Know where to go for help
To listen to and act on disclosures from friends, families, colleagues and the wider community
Understand that domestic abusers are most violent when their victim tries to end a violent relationship or seeks help.

10. Locally supporting older women experiencing domestic abuse
Older Women’s Support Service
Freephone Helpline

11. Links
Standing Together (2016)
Home Office (2016) Domestic-Homicide-Review-Analysis pdf
Homicide Index (2016) rendingmarch2017
LGA & ADASS (2015)
Birmingham Domestic Abuse Prevention Strategy
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