Ava Berry, Senior Policy Adviser at Foundations, reflects on the vital role of the children’s workforce in ensuring that children affected by domestic abuse get the support they need, and how our work to generate evidence on effective programmes can help us understand how to build a confident, skilled, and well-supported workforce.

For too long, babies, children, and young people have been invisible victims of domestic abuse. We know that approximately one in five children will be victims of domestic abuse as they grow up, and that the impacts of this can be severe and enduring.

Finally, in 2021, the Domestic Abuse Act recognised children as victims in their own right. While this was a significant step forwards, validating the harms associated with growing up within an environment where there is domestic abuse, children continue to slip through the gaps in support. On top of this, the underreporting of abuse means that the number of children affected by domestic abuse is likely to be far greater than estimated, concealing the true scale of harm.

Practitioners in the children’s workforce have a vital role to play in spotting the signs of domestic abuse, and in engaging with families where this has been identified. Domestic abuse is consistently among the most common reasons for referrals to children’s social care and is a factor in over half of Serious Case Reviews. However, evidence shows that practitioners are not always well-equipped for these situations, and can lack the confidence and training to identify and respond to domestic abuse in its various forms. This means that children don’t always get the support they need, when they need it most.

What do we already know about the workforce in relation to domestic abuse?

Important work led by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner identified ‘a significant disconnect between domestic abuse and child safeguarding responses to child victims’. She has repeatedly called for specialist domestic abuse training for all frontline professionals working with children and young people. The Government report on the multi-agency response to children who are victims of domestic abuse has also highlighted how practice in some areas was focused more on adults needs rather than children, and some placed too much responsibility on the role of non-abusing parents, mostly mothers, in protecting children.

Our own evidence, published in 2024, has also told us more about the knowledge, understanding, and skills of the workforce in relation to domestic abuse, finding links between receiving domestic abuse training and family support practitioners having the confidence and knowledge to respond to domestic abuse. It also found gaps in the skills and confidence of the Family Help workforce in relation to working with perpetrators and families from minoritised backgrounds – areas where specialist expertise is vital.

Generating evidence on domestic abuse workforce programmes

A confident, skilled, and well-equipped workforce improves the chances that children will receive the support they need, when they need it. The Department for Education has committed to upskilling the workforce response to children and domestic abuse, but we need to understand what works to support practitioners to identify and respond to domestic abuse. Our new programme of work is pivotal to meeting this ambition.

We have already kicked off work to prepare for an evaluation of the Safe & Together Model in London, and today, we’re launching two new calls, directed at service providers, to find other domestic abuse workforce development programmes that could be evaluated for impact. Through this work, we aim to build strong evidence on promising domestic abuse workforce development programmes by demonstrating their impact, understanding how they help the workforce respond better to the needs of children, young people and families, and identifying approaches that could be adopted more widely across the sector.

We also know there are specific gaps in the response to supporting minoritised ethnic families experiencing domestic abuse, which can exacerbate existing inequalities. By and For organisations (specialist services that are led, designed, and delivered by and for the users and communities they aim to serve) are vital here, because they are led by the communities they serve, grounded in an intersectional approach, and able to provide culturally sensitive responses to domestic abuse – they are an essential backbone in the response. However, these organisations often face significant funding and capacity pressures, which means they can lack the resources to take part in evaluation. This is why the second strand of our open call is open only to By and For organisations, providing funding for evaluation capacity-building and tailored support in preparation for a potential future robust evaluation.

This work is an essential element of our REACH Plan, which aims to find out what works to prevent domestic abuse and support child victims. As the What Works Centre for Children & Families, we have a crucial role to play in identifying evidence-based approaches which have a positive impact on children’s outcomes, but the right conditions need to be in place in order for children and families to access this support. Providing practitioners with the right tools and preparation to engage with families affected by domestic abuse is an important way of setting these conditions.

We know there are many practitioners and organisations already doing this work well. Through this programme of work we hope to better understand how to replicate the conditions for a consistent, high-quality response, so all children and families experiencing domestic abuse receive the help they need to recover.

Find out more about our domestic abuse workforce programmes evidence fund.
Find out more about our call for By and For organisations.