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Learning from Audits

The Multi-Agency & Domestic Abuse

Children as Victims: A Cross-Croydon Insight

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Following two multi-agency audits, the following information aims to provide practitioners with key findings, practical guidance, and essential resources to better identify, support, and safeguard children affected by Domestic Abuse (DA).

Image by Arturo Esparza

Key Learning Themes from the Audits

1

Training & Workforce Development

  • Inconsistency: Training depth varies significantly across the partnership, with gaps in understanding the impact on infant brain development.

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  • Domestic Abuse Act 2021: Limited practitioner awareness of the legal shift from "witness" to "victim" for children.

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  • Professional Curiosity: Need for more robust supervision that encourages staff to look beyond parental presentations.

2

Multi-Agency Collaboration

  • Core Strengths: Positive collaboration evidenced in MARAC and MASH, showing strong risk-assessment cultures.

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  • Engagement Gaps: Housing involvement is often delayed, impacting the speed of safety planning and property security.

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  • Information Flow: Lack of systematic feedback loop means referring agencies often don't know the final outcome or safety plan.

3

Voice of the Child

  • Captured Inconsistency: Older children's views are better documented, while under-7s and non-verbal children lack representation.

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  • Behaviour as Voice: Need to interpret changes in nursery/school attendance and behaviour as a form of "victim voice."

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  • Additional Needs: Children with SEND require more tailored, accessible tools to communicate their lived experience of DA.

4

Barriers & Emerging Risks

  • Fear of Removal: Families consistently cite the fear of children being taken into care as the primary reason for non-disclosure.

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  • Economic Factors: Cost-of-living pressures are increasingly used as a tool for financial coercive control within families.

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  • Modern Risks: Rising trends in child-on-adult violence and tech-facilitated stalking/harassment require new safeguarding approaches.

5

Policy and Leadership

  • Standalone Policies: Very few agencies have DA policies that place children at the centre rather than as a secondary concern.

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  • DA Champions: While roles exist, their visibility and influence in everyday decision-making vary across departments.

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  • Siloed Data: Inability to share real-time data on DA incidents hinders a truly preventative multi-agency response.

How agencies can improve practice

To address the audit findings, agencies must adopt a proactive, trauma-informed approach. The following suggestions are structured around the three pillars of improvement: Foundation, Action, and Impact, which outline key areas for local practice improvement.

Pillar 1:

Establish the Foundation

(Workforce & Policy)

  • Training: Ensure all staff receive mandatory, consistent training on DA, specifically focusing on the child as a victim under the DA Act 2021.

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  • Policy: Develop or update a standalone DA policy that explicitly safeguards children as victims, and ensure all staff are aware of their agency's DA champion/lead.

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  • Curiosity: Enhance clinical/case supervision frameworks to embed professional curiosity and challenge assumptions about parental and child behaviour.

Pillar 2:

Drive Collaborative Action

(Information & Pathways)

  • Pathways: Implement formal, clear protocols to ensure the timely and mandatory engagement of all essential partners, particularly Housing, in high-risk (MARAC/MASH) cases.

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  • Feedback: Prioritise receiving and providing explicit two-way feedback on referrals to ensure multi-agency decisions and actions are fully understood and enacted.

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  • Data: Improve local data collection to be consistent and unified, enabling a clearer view of the scale of DA and the outcomes for children.

Pillar 3:

Maximise Child Impact (Voice & Support)

  • VoC Tools: Actively seek out and utilise specialist, non-verbal tools and creative methods to consistently capture the voices of the most vulnerable, including under-7s and children with additional needs.

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  • Reassurance: Proactively reassure families that engaging with support services does not automatically lead to child removal, addressing a key identified barrier.

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  • Risk: Stay alert to emerging risks such as online harm, coercive control, and harmful sexual behaviours.

Further Resources

 

Croydon Services

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Training

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Briefings & Podcasts

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Family Support

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