30 July 2025
Reports bring us ‘a step closer to consistently understanding how best to support children who experience domestic abuse’, says Foundations, the national What Works Centre for Children & Families
Research published today by Foundations, conducted by the University of Sussex, has identified valid and reliable tools to measure the impact of services on the outcomes of children who experience domestic violence and abuse (DVA).
The findings mean that, for the first time, programmes to support these children can be compared using consistent measures of their feelings of safety and mental wellbeing. The landmark Domestic Abuse Act recognises children as victims, with evidence that if exposed to domestic abuse, children are more likely to experience increased fear and a lack of security and safety. A child’s feeling of safety is one of the core outcomes that academics, practitioners and abuse survivors agree is crucial when evaluating interventions to support children who experience domestic abuse.
In 2023, Foundations highlighted that over 800,000 children in England and Wales experienced domestic abuse in any given year (1) but until now, there has been a gap in the evidence on the effectiveness of child-focused domestic abuse interventions. By identifying how to consistently measure a set of agreed outcomes, today’s research will help to build a more robust and useful evidence base to inform policy and practice. Foundations is calling for funders and researchers to start using these tools so that consistent, high-quality data about what works can be collected.
The Government is expected to respond this summer to the recent report of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs, on child victims of domestic abuse, which stresses the urgent need to tackle the problem of insufficient evidence and data about children’s outcomes and what works to support them. (2)
Foundations’ reports draw on the views of practitioners, service providers and children and caregivers who experience domestic abuse. They find that the tools identified can also be used to measure the impact of programmes on family relationships and on caregiver mental wellbeing.
Dr Jo Casebourne, Chief Executive of Foundations, said:
“Today’s reports take us one step closer to being able to reliably measure the impact of services on children who experience domestic abuse. This is currently a major gap in our understanding, which we must tackle if we are to ensure that all children who experience domestic abuse get effective support. The findings mean that we can now assess how interventions can improve children’s overall wellbeing and help them to feel safer and more secure. The next step is for researchers, commissioners, and service providers to start using these tools to find out what works for the children and families they see.”
Dr Aoife O’Higgins, Director of Evidence at Foundations, said:
“Identifying how to measure core outcomes is a crucial milestone in our efforts to build a strong evidence base on interventions for children and young people who experience domestic abuse. Currently, the evidence base is severely limited by the lack of consistent outcomes measured and the variety of measures used.
“The ability to measure improvements to children’s wellbeing and feelings of safety and to compare interventions designed to support them is a breakthrough in our efforts to address the effects of domestic abuse. We will continue to encourage the use of core outcomes and associated measures in the evaluations we fund, and we urge other funders and evaluators to do the same.”
Dr Emma Howarth, Associate Professor in Child and Family Mental Health at the University of Sussex, said:
“Services providing support to children and families who have experienced domestic abuse are underfunded and under resourced. Key to changing this is supporting the sector and its partners to generate high quality and consistent evidence about what works, for whom, and in what circumstances. The core outcome set represents an important step towards improving the quality of evidence but also in making sure that the ways in which we measure success captures the things that matter most to people.”
For further information, please contact Lucy Burns, Head of Communications and Public Affairs: lucy.burns@foundations.org.uk / 0777925088
Notes to editors
- Based on data in the Office of National Statistics (ONS) Crime Survey for England & Wales, and 2021 Census data, we estimated more than 827,000 children in England and Wales were present in the household where there was partner abuse between adults in 2023.
- Domestic Abuse Commissioner (2025) Victims in their own right? Babies, children and young people’s experience of domestic abuse. https://domesticabusecommissioner.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/dac_bcyp_main-report_V6-DIGITAL.pdf
About Foundations
Foundations is the What Works Centre for Children & Families. We believe all children should have the foundational relationships they need to thrive in life. We’re researching, generating, and translating evidence into practical solutions that shape better policy and practice and lead to more effective family support services. Foundations was formed through the merger of What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) and the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) in December 2022.