Domestic abuse team formed to tackle growing problem

Domestic abuse "a problem" in West Berkshire, according to council

VIOLENCE in families where children are present has been identified as a growing problem in West Berkshire following the Baby P incident.

A new domestic abuse team has been set up by West Berkshire Council to address the issue has been linked to a huge rise in referrals to the district's children's services team, causing significant financial pressures.

The Domestic Abuse Referral Team (DART) has been formed to target early interventions and work with families at the first sign of trouble to help ease problems later on.

If a household contains a child when police respond to an incident of domestic abuse the council's referral team is informed, and since the tragic death of Baby Peter who was killed despite being on Haringey Council's child at risk register, the number of referrals had risen by 93 per cent from 2009/10 to 2010/11.

From 2010 to 2011 the number of children in West Berkshire subject to a child protection plan where domestic abuse was a major contributing factor was over half, and this figure is likely to rise to 89 per cent if domestic abuse is a factor but not a major contributing reason.

A report before the council's executive on Thursday said the problem had a significant impact on social care resources and the head of children's services at West Berkshire Council, Margaret Goldie, explained what action was being taken.

“Domestic violence is an issue, it is one area where we are seeing an increase,” she said.

“The level of referrals shows we are not responding fast enough.”

The report was tied in to an announcement that the children and young people's directorate was one of three overspending departments, owing much to the unstable nature of how many children are taken into care and what it takes to look after them.

Investment in family support through the DART team is seen as one way of counteracting the long term financial costs caused by fostering and expensive court proceedings.

Speaking after the meeting, the West Central Locality Manager at West Berkshire Council, Sue Adamantos, said the council had shifted the way it dealt with cases of domestic abuse in recent years and the creation of the new team placed a focus on finding families that had problems as early on in the process as possible.

She said DART would seek preventative measures and would work with perpetrators as well as victims to try and resolve the problems.

The head of children's services, Mark Evans, added that the council had extended its network to reach into schools as well as other agencies.

In previous years and still evident in other councils he said often it took several reported incidents before an intervention was made.

“What we find is that domestic abuse is rarely a one off, and sometimes we will find that there have been incidents before,” he said.

“We try to get in as early as possible and open up a dialogue with the family. There is no set length of time for how long we are with them.”