Rethinking domestic abuse in child protection: The importance of Family Forums

Rethinking domestic abuse in child protection (RDAC) is a research project which aims to better understand and improve the national response to domestic violence and abuse (DVA) and child protection.

A key part of the co-production approach embedded within RDAC has been the Family Forums, which operated in parallel with the Community of Practice. The Forums enabled the research team to meaningfully engage citizens with lived experiences of domestic abuse and child protection, at various stages of the research process.

The Forums were facilitated by project partner organisations SafeLives, Future Men and Circles Training and Consultancy. These are specialist organisations who collaborated with the RDAC team to reach and engage families, and to ensure that they had access to support during their participation with RDAC, should they need it.

What are Family Forums?

The Family Forums involved informal meetings with groups or individuals – victim-survivors, partners, or wider family members – from households in which there has been a person using domestic abuse and involvement from children’s social care. Creating ‘feedback loops’ at various points during the life of the study, the Forums ensured that the voices of families were heard and included in the research team’s analysis of the data collected during interviews with professionals working in children’s social care at three case study sites. 

This provided family members with a unique opportunity to share their views concerning the themes in the data, from the perspectives of their lived experiences. The Forums also offered a platform for making sense of the findings in terms of what they might mean for other families with similar experiences.

The value of Family Forums

The following quote from a victim-survivor involved in the Family Forums underlines why it is so important to engage those with lived experience in research that affects their lives, including studies which address domestic abuse and child protection:  

People with lived experience have told us that they volunteered to be in the Family Forums because they wanted to make a difference by contributing to work that could enhance the child protection response to domestic abuse for other victim-survivors and their families. Several themes in the data resonated with members of the Forums, who were able to offer various viewpoints on those themes, thereby helping the research team to make better sense of the data.

The imperative of listening to, and meaningfully incorporating the voices of lived experience is a common strand that runs through the work of all three partner organisations responsible for the implementation of RDAC’s Family Forums. As Jen Daw, Senior Research Analyst at SafeLives, states:

They recognise that survivors bring knowledge and insight which is vital for responding well to domestic abuse. This participatory approach must, however, be undertaken without causing harm, emphasising the need to ensure people understand what their involvement may entail, and offering them any support they may need. 

Director of Circles Training and Consultancy, Sharon Inglis, reminds us that there is also extensive evidence to suggest that partnering with families, children, young people and communities is safe and that it can bring about sustainable change where there is concern about child safety and domestic abuse. However, as Sharon notes, social work practice rarely extends beyond the main carers, with confidentiality concerns used as a reason to avoid having wider conversations to seek support for those at risk. Consequently, this enables those who harm to further isolate and shut down the voice of those who are harmed.

Engaging in a wider conversation with informal networks around a family offers more culturally appropriate responses, contextual knowledge, and builds resilience that will support the family long after the professionals have left. Hearing the voices of all those affected by domestic abuse in interpreting the themes that emerge from RDAC via the Family Forums provides a unique and rich insight into how professional practice impacts families so that systems can offer relevant, effective solutions that don’t cause further harm.

In keeping with these sentiments, Owen Thomas of Future Men, describes how including the voices of men in research via mechanisms such as RDAC’s Family Forums is key to achieving sustainable change for all. Owen emphasises that often men’s views – both as those who have caused harm and as those who have experienced harm – are lost amid the understandable desire to safeguard women and children. Using a culturally sensitive and culturally aware approach, Future Men mobilises a non-judgemental approach to work with these groups of men, while also offering both support and constructive challenge.

In doing so, Future Men encourages men to reflect upon their own behaviour and analyse the systems they are subject to. So that, when things do go wrong, systems are better placed to react and keep people safe. They are also able to offer solutions and support to break harmful cycles, as well as to bring about fair accountability and positive change for everyone concerned.

What the Family Forums told us

A range of topics emerged during a thematic analysis of what the family members told us. While it is important to note that not all the Family Forums said the same things and these findings may not apply to everyone, we can identify some of the more prominent themes. One of the most significant was housing because difficulties in securing new, safe accommodation can leave families feeling trapped in domestic abuse, or victim-survivors facing the risk of financial insecurity or poverty if they leave the home they share with the person causing the harm.

Others discussed that while poverty does not cause DVA, it can exacerbate the challenges DVA presents for families in various and complex ways. These included the financial implications of court costs which can leave people with debts long into the future. This financial penalty can also present a barrier to taking any further court action. Some family members felt that there is a greater degree of state intervention in the lives of poorer or less affluent families when experiencing DVA.

Participants minoritised by ethnicity talked about a lack of knowledge concerning cultural issues among some social care professionals, coupled with a dearth of culturally specific services to meet their needs. Others discussed how social workers can at times employ an unduly narrow cultural lens when working with families that does not accommodate for diversity in cultural norms or belief systems concerning issues such as parenting.

Next steps

As RDAC draws to a close, the team will continue to explore all of these themes as well as several others, incorporating the views of everyone who has spoken to us during the Family Forums. This learning will be published in upcoming RDAC open access resources and will be reflected in the practice and policy principles the team is developing to inform new ways of working in this space.

We will share this learning during an upcoming event to mark the culmination of the project. With a focus on findings for practice, the open access event will take place on 17 September.

Explore all of the open access RDAC resources to support policy and practice change.