Wigan Community Safety Partnership Domestic Abuse Strategy 2025 to 2028
Our vision is to create a safe, supportive, and resilient community in Wigan, where every individual can live free from the threat of domestic abuse. We aspire to foster an environment where victims are empowered, supported, and believed, ensuring they have access to resources and services that promote healing and recovery. By raising awareness, and challenging societal norms that perpetuate abuse, we aim to cultivate a culture of respect, kindness, and accountability.
Whole system approach
What we do
- Work to ensure that all partners work collectively and collaboratively as a whole system to respond to and prevent domestic abuse.
How we do it
- Work towards a ‘single view’ domestic abuse warehouse solution drawing on multi-agency information to enable better analysis to inform interventions
- Work closely with criminal, civil, and family courts to better protect victims and ensure perpetrators are held accountable, including banning cross examination of victims and ensuring the Judiciary and Magistrates are trained
- Ensure that the victims' experiences and insight shape new services and evaluate existing approaches, using both the Experts by Experience group and capturing wider victims' views of our services
- Evaluate community and victim based needs in order to develop, commission and embed new support and recovery services in the borough
- Scope out and evaluate the current offer regarding counselling based children’s services, including Voluntary, Community, and Social Enterprise (VCSE) opportunities to enhance the overall offer.
Prevention - changing attitudes and behaviours
What we do
- Change the culture of acceptance of domestic abuse through awareness raising, and challenge attitudes that foster domestic abuse
- Raise awareness and understanding of healthy relationships.
How we do it
- Continue to embed healthy relationship awareness in young people’s spaces (both within and beyond the school environment)
- Re-establish a wider approach to work based domestic abuse policies (private and community sector) and work-based awareness raising (to support proactive conversations)
- Evaluate, develop and implement a domestic abuse board/delivery group approach to awareness raising rooted in, with, and by communities
- Undertake further analysis to understand where our “hidden” or undisclosed pockets of domestic abuse are
- Align domestic abuse within the local Suicide Prevention Strategy and approach.
Early identification and help
What we do
- Increase opportunities for victims to safely and confidently disclose that domestic abuse is happening to them, especially within workplaces and communities
- Improve the skills and confidence of professionals in spotting the signs of domestic abuse to improve first responses.
How we do it
- Work with Health Trusts and Primary Care (including GPs) to support identification and access to support for victims of domestic abuse accessing health services
- Develop a consistent, discreet way for victims to seek help
- Refresh our Domestic Abuse Champions programme and expand the programme within a broader set of workspaces (voluntary and private sector) and within (and with) communities
- Expand organisations’ use of domestic abuse workforce policies into the voluntary and private sector
- Work with specialist services who support people with protected characteristics to help their staff confidently spot and support people who may be victims.
Children and young people are protected
What we do
- Embed evidenced based practice approaches, standards, and interventions consistently across services through implementation across all thresholds of need, and implementation of new models of working
- Identify and support children and young people affected by domestic abuse, including supporting young people in abusive relationships.
How we do it
- Implement Domestic Abuse Practitioners (DAPs) co-locating them with targeted Family Help and Family Hub teams with working arrangements with other key services and partners
- Embed domestic abuse within the Family Hub Steering Group and framework
- Embed evidenced practice approaches, standards and interventions consistently across children’s services regarding domestic abuse
- Ensure Early Help and Family Hub staff are trained with the understanding and experience to hold perpetrators to account
- Enable community based and targeted awareness campaigns through Family Hubs and Family Help teams especially around community pillars of education and primary care
- Increase opportunities within Family Hubs to allow victims to disclose domestic abuse is happening and focus on early identification of the signs of abuse
- Develop a longer term and holistic offer as part of our Early Help and Performance/Quality Assurance (QA) framework to keep survivors and their children safe and aid recovery
- Develop and commit to an improved, integrated approach to joint QA audits in relation to domestic abuse.
Improve safety, support and recovery for victims
What we do
- Develop, commission and implement effective pathways and responses that support victims and their families, and that evidence progression to domestic abuse free lives (whilst ensuring those at risk are protected from harm) including access to safe accommodation.
How we do it
- Develop and implement a Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) Improvement Plan
- Promote greater use of Domestic Abuse Protection Notices (DAPNs) and Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs) by police, and support civil protection measures like Non-Molestation Orders
- Undertake a Coordinated Community Response Model (CCRM) system review
- Establish analysis and responses regarding thematic areas of risk (mental health, court delays, etc)
- Implement the Safe Accommodation Delivery Group Plan
- Implement a VCSE Forum for safer accommodation/wider domestic abuse services
- Further develop an overarching performance and quality assurance framework
- Ensure greater availability of places for families with children, and all genders within our accommodation offer
- Evaluate the impact of Operation Encompass and review the approach to ensure there is a consistent effective approach across all schools and educational settings.
Hold perpetrators to account
What we do
- Develop, commission and implement effective pathways and responses that support victims, that hold perpetrators to account, and that evidence changed behaviour (whilst ensuring those at risk are protected from harm).
How we do it
- Continue to develop, evaluate and extend the Multi Agency Tasking and Coordination (MATAC) offender management process
- Strengthen partnerships with key agencies such as the Prison and Probation Service, Victim Liaison, Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA), and Liaison and Diversion
- Continued monitoring and deeper evaluation of the DAPO pilot
- Develop the commissioning of voluntary perpetrator programme to re-focus around a broader family approach, and align into wider planning/case management in children’s services
- Explore options for more victim focused approaches to prosecution
- Establish local response to wider gender-based violence perpetrator strategy being developed regionally.