Assistant Service Manager, Justice Social Work, Glasgow Health & Social Care Partnership
Domestic Abuse is a priority for the Glasgow Health & Social Care Partnership within the Glasgow City Integrated Joint Board Strategic Plan (2019 – 2022). This plan has been extended for an additional year due to the pandemic. Significant engagement activity with clients using our service has been enacted and will be built into further consultations for future planning activity.
CLICK ON THE PICTURE LINK BELOW TO OPEN THE DOCUMENT
For domestic abuse the Strategic Plan attempts to:
- address abuse and all forms of gender-based violence (against women and men);
- support the roll out of the Caledonian System – an integrated approach to address men’s domestic abuse and to improve the lives of women, children and men; and
- reduce the risk that they will re-offend
To find out more about the Caledonian System CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW to read the evaluation:
Or you can CLICK THE LINK TO THE VIDEO BELOW and read the article from STV news (by Susan Ripoll 07/04/2022).
The article notes that in 2020-21:
- Across Scotland there were 33,245 domestic abuse criminal charges recorded – an increase of 9% on 2019-2020.
- 92% of these went to court, with a number of those convicted ordered to take part in the Caledonian system to address their behaviour in a bid to reduce the likeliness they will re-offend.
This activity has resulted in the service developing a comprehensive Glasgow City Health and Social Partnership Domestic Abuse Strategy for 2022-2025. The strategy pledges to improve our services to people who experience or are otherwise affected by domestic abuse across our city, as well as improve our understanding of, and response to, people who cause harm through domestic abuse.
A full public consultation will take place in relation to the draft plan and will be extended to those with an interest in domestic abuse assessment and intervention practice across the City. Over two hundred staff engaged with initial participation sessions to inform the plan. Extensive engagement activity has already begun with service users and support has been provided to third sector partners to enable them to meaningfully engage with service users and people affected by domestic abuse. There are plans to include those, subject to Community Payback Orders through the Caledonian System and victims in touch with that service.
In 2021 an oversight and working group framework were created across the Health and Social Care partnership to begin work on assessing service areas current assessment and intervention practice and were placed in groupings under the headings:
- Public Protection;
- Children Services; and
- Adult Services.
Justice Social Work are working alongside Homeless Services, Alcohol and Drug Recovery and Police and Prison Health Care within the Public Protection workstream to design improvement plans in 2022. Workstreams emanating from this group includes:
- Community Justice staff survey;
- desk top evaluation;
- assessment audit of Criminal Justice Social Work (CJSWR) reports;
- revision of departmental assessment pack in domestic abuse;
- development of a Safer framework of intervention for those not suitable for the Caledonian System;
- consideration of the best model to fully integrate the Caledonian System into Community Justice practice; and
- improving the use of data to inform levels of intervention, patterns and service design.
Significant training activity has begun in relation to:
- Safe and Together – a systems approach and shared language for perpetrator patterns, partnering with victims in strengths-based approaches.
- Routine Enquiry and safety planning for those in Justice Services and wider public protection interfaces working and engaging with victims.
CLICK THE PICTURE LINKS BELOW TO READ THE EVALUATION
Whilst men who use violence against women are already included in the ‘Your Voice’ workstream plans, phase two of that work includes extending provision to specialist intervention practice and to consider whether it is appropriate to use the framework for victims who are engaging with the Caledonian Women’s workers. For more information on ‘Your Voice’ you can click the link to read the article ‘Giving Voice to Lived Experience – Your Voice Update’
There is significant work occurring across the Health and Social Care partnership and hopefully this will lead to shared understanding around safe recording and information sharing and improvements for victims/children.
