The Restart programme

The Restart programme is delivered by the Drive Partnership, which brings together CSC, housing, and domestic abuse sector services to identify, change, and disrupt patterns of harmful behaviour at an early stage. The programme takes a multi-agency, whole family approach to hold perpetrators accountable for change, in order to prevent escalation of risk and ensure that (ex-) partner and child victim-survivors can remain safe and together at home.

The programme can be broken down into the following four components:

The Safe & Together model: a system-level approach aimed at improving the response to domestic abuse by enhancing the awareness and understanding of CSC, Early Help, and housing workforces. The implementation focuses on holding the perpetrator accountable while ensuring the safety of the (ex-) partner and child(ren) victim-survivors, keeping them together at home where possible.

A one-to-one domestic abuse perpetrator intervention: lasting four to eight weeks, designed to improve motivation and readiness for behaviour change. The goal is to facilitate the perpetrator’s onward referral to a longer-term behaviour change program.

A support pathway for (ex-) partner victim-survivors, which involves parallel support and risk monitoring, identifying their needs while the perpetrator engages in the intervention.

An optional housing pathway for service users. This pathway facilitates access to temporary, diversionary accommodation for the service user, guided by the wishes of the victim-survivor.

We have commissioned Cordis Bright to conduct a feasibility study of the Restart programme (‘Restart’). The feasibility study is adopting an exploratory “test and learn” approach, focusing on building capacity for future impact evaluation of the programme.