Improving responses to domestic abuse in England: A holistic approach

2024-25 Pilot Project

Image credit: Gabriel Schucan

Our Pilot Research Project
We need new ideas about how to respond to domestic abuse. Our research team brings together expertise from different fields: social science, operational research, and crime science. This mix of skills allows us to explore a new holistic way of understanding domestic abuse.
Our focus in this project is on male perpetrated violence against women. Our research asks: 

• What is the existing and potential role of informal supporters in the current system of responses to domestic abuse in England? 

What will we do
We will use soft-systems methodology (SSM) for our project, which has two main phases: 
Phase 1: Developing a theoretical model
Our team will develop a theoretical model which looks at the current responses to domestic abuse by different people and organisations. This model will help us find better ways to help. For example, we will think about when and how friends and family respond to someone experiencing an abusive relationship. We will ask what could be done to improve outcomes for the victim-survivor.  

Phase 2: Stakeholder Engagement
Listening to views of real people affected by domestic abuse is an important part of our research project.  Victim-survivors, their supporters, domestic abuse organizations, police and others will be invited to review and comment on our theoretical model. This will help us to make sure that our work addresses the real needs and concerns of those impacted by domestic abuse.
Updates on our project will be published on this webpage.

Please kindly note that we are currently not recruiting participants or stakeholders for this project.

If you think someone is experiencing domestic abuse:
You can read “How to support someone who is experiencing domestic abuse” by our team member, Dr. Schucan Bird or visit SafeLives #ReachIn page here.

Call for advise: 
National Domestic Abuse Helpline (England) – 0808 200 0247 
Domestic and Sexual Abuse Helpline (Northern Ireland) – 0808 802 1414
Domestic Abuse and Forced Marriage Helpline (Scotland) – 0800 027 1234
Live Fear Free Helpline (Wales) – 0808 8010 800

• If you believe someone is in immediate danger, call 999 and ask for the police

Further details about our project: 
Social policy + operational research + policing
In the field of domestic abuse, existing research about informal networks (friends, relatives, and/ or neighbours of victims or perpetrators of abuse) is a small but growing area. Primarily from social science, this literature offers insights that could enhance decision-making and statutory responses to domestic abuse. Such knowledge, however, has not (yet) been explored or harnessed for policy and practice. This project mobilises and builds on the existing knowledge base to address a research question orientated towards practice:  what is the existing and potential role of informal supporters in the current system of responses to domestic abuse in England?

Domestic abuse remains a ‘wicked problem’ that is difficult, complex, and seemingly intractable (Carne et al., 2019). New approaches and innovative thinking are therefore needed to reconsider state and social responses to domestic abuse. This project aims to contribute to this endeavour in three main ways:

1) The project explores the potential of systems science as a novel approach to domestic abuse that can recognise the complex drivers of abuse and promising strategies for intervention (Tracy et al., 2023). Systems analysis helps to build a collective understanding of the parts of a system, interrelationships between these parts and a view of the system as a whole. Such thinking is amenable to issues such as domestic abuse and aims to drive transformative systemic change (Carne et al., 2019). The project aims to explore the possibilities of applying systems thinking specifically to the policing response to domestic abuse, an approach that has not, to our knowledge, been attempted before.

2) The project foregrounds the role of informal network in the system response to domestic abuse, which have hitherto been largely overlooked by current services but recognised as a key part of ‘whole systems’ approaches (Cordis Bright, 2019). This aligns with systems thinking, which recognises the crucial role of the views and experiences of all stakeholders in understanding the whole system.

3) The project embeds stakeholder engagement, recognised as a key pillar in domestic abuse research (Women’s Aid, 2020).

Research Team

Additional UCL Collaborator
Professor Martin Utley (left), Clinical Operational Research Unit, Dept. of Mathematics,, Mathematical & Physical Sciences

Early Career Researcher
Kristyna Skriczka (right), Social Research Institute, IOE