An independent evaluation of the Safe & Together London Partnership found that in its second year, the project’s work with children’s social care teams moved beyond training alone. The partnership supports London boroughs to use the Safe & Together™ Model, which holds perpetrators of domestic abuse accountable for the harm they cause while working alongside the non-abusive parent. Five East London boroughs began this work in Year 1, and Hammersmith and Fulham joined in Year 2. Evaluators from London Metropolitan University’s Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit returned for a second year to see whether the early gains from Year 1 were holding.
By Year 2, training was one part of a four-part approach. The other three parts were one-to-one case consultations with implementation leads (specialist staff based in each borough), a shared “professional hub” of tools and resources, and ongoing case audits and quality-assurance review. Case audits across all six boroughs found that the early signs of change seen in Year 1 were developing into more consistent patterns of practice. Hackney added a new way to record interventions with perpetrators in its case management system. Before this, no borough could track that work directly, and the rest of the partnership is now expected to adopt it.
In the two boroughs that had used the approach the longest, evaluators noted a rise in complaints from perpetrators. They read this as a possible sign that workers are challenging perpetrators more directly, and they encouraged boroughs to plan for it. That progress came against a backdrop of short-term, insecure funding. The funding situation strained staff retention and contributed to two of the original five boroughs stepping back from the partnership by the end of Year 2, even as interest in extending the approach across London remained strong.