Reading’s Domestic Abuse and Safe Accommodation Strategy 2022 – 2025

Overview

Domestic abuse is a public health issue, which can affect anyone regardless of their age, sex, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion and disability. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021, defines Domestic Abuse as individuals aged 16 and over who are ‘personally connected’ to one another who may be experiencing behaviours inclusive of:

• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Violent or threatening behaviour
• Controlling or coercive behaviour
• Economic abuse
• Psychological, emotional or other abuse

The new Domestic Act 2021, has placed statutory requirements on all local authorities to:

• Establish and appoint a Domestic Abuse Local Partnership Board
• Complete a needs assessment to identify the need for accommodation-based domestic abuse support for victims and their children.
• Establish a Domestic Abuse Strategy to set out how those accommodation-based support issues will be provided inline with the needs assessment  
• Act on gaps identified through the strategy and needs assessment through commissioning/decommissioning processes, including safer accommodation provision
• Evaluating the effectiveness of the strategy annually through an action plan

This has helped inform the draft Domestic Abuse and Safe Accommodation Strategy 2022-2025 which builds on the partnership work undertaken previously to reduce the prevalence of Domestic Abuse in Reading. The Board has developed the following proposed priorities, which the new strategy will focus on over the next 3 years:

Proposed priorities

Effectively commission refuge and support services to provide safe and permanent accommodation for all victim-survivors and their children

Raising community awareness about Domestic Abuse and regularly review the effectiveness of training provided to all professionals supporting victim-survivors of Domestic Abuse

Improve engagement with marginalised communities to encourage and gain the trust of those with protected characteristics to help remove barriers when accessing services

Develop and support a multi-agency approach to working with a range of service users, for example, perpetrators of Domestic Abuse and victim-survivors (irrespective of gender/sexuality identity)

Develop further support pathways that focus specifically on the needs of children and young people who have experienced, lived, have lived or witnessed Domestic Abuse