Domestic abuse cases often leave children’s social care workers focused on what a mother did or didn’t do to protect her children, while the person actually causing the harm stays out of view. The Safe & Together™ Model shifts that focus to the perpetrator’s behaviour and its impact on the children, while working alongside the non-abusive parent. In 2021, five East London boroughs used Home Office funding to roll out the Model across their children’s social care teams, building on earlier work already underway in Hackney and Waltham Forest. They did so in formal partnership with the Safe & Together Institute and Respect, the UK’s accreditation body for perpetrator interventions. Independent evaluators from London Metropolitan University’s Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit tracked the first year.
Across the five boroughs, 287 staff completed the introductory Overview Training and 205 completed the intensive Core Training. Implementation leads, specialist staff based in each borough, ran 264 one-to-one case consultations to help caseworkers apply the Model to real cases. Evaluators cautioned that the data was too limited for firm conclusions after one year, but the early direction was positive. Hackney and Waltham Forest, the two boroughs that had used the approach the longest, continued to see more domestic abuse being identified. They also saw fewer children on care plans or taken into care where domestic abuse was a factor. Data from Redbridge and Newham began moving the same way.
Social workers described the Model as a relief from an unspoken expectation that survivors alone were responsible for keeping their children safe. Some said its questionnaires and mapping tool gave them the confidence to engage perpetrators directly, and case consultations helped them apply what they had learned to their own cases. Evaluators also flagged gaps still to close: behaviour-change programmes remain scarce for African, Caribbean, and Black British perpetrators, and case management systems don’t yet let boroughs track interventions with perpetrators directly. Both were named as priorities for Year 2.