It’s June, year 2024, a nice summer’s day. It’s our 10th meeting for the Domestic Abuse Development Partner programme. There’s a good mix of people in the room – women with experience of domestic abuse, voluntary and statutory sector organisations, a learning partner, and Cripplegate Foundation.
We are talking about one of the ideas that the partners want to test over the next period. It involves bringing in a case study and thinking collectively how it went, what worked, what went wrong, and most importantly what can we learn for future cases. As we are examining the idea in detail, one of the women with lived experience shared her perspective, saying: “For this to have any impact, it needs to shift from blame to learning.” The weight of this idea silenced everyone.
How did we get to this point in the programme? Of women with experience of domestic violence speaking freely about how to make others, us in the room included, insert the ‘how’ into the domestic abuse response? Of bringing forward ideas that the partners feel energised to take to action?
“For this to have any impact, it needs to shift from blame to learning.”
So far, we have had 10 sessions and counting. We spent the first sessions building a strong base rooted in a healthy sense of connection, trust, and belonging. The connection built in this first phase is evident in this and other moments, with partners able to speak up – feeling safe, comfortable, included, and valued. Trust was anchored in the group agreement we formulated collectively right from the start of the partnership. These agreements are typically something static that remains on a dusty shelf, but in this programme we re-visit and adapt each time we meet. Belonging comes from the growing sense that, despite differences, we all have a shared purpose we are working towards.
As the meetings went on, rich learning was generated. We talked about the learning led by survivors, a marker that sets this work apart from other types of partnerships. In this approach, survivors are not just telling their story, but reflecting on how to use learning to make the lives of other women in similar circumstances better.
“The connection built in this first phase is evident in this and other moments, with partners able to speak up – feeling safe, comfortable, included, and valued.”
Mapping has been an important part of our work. We have mapped out our social networks, and learned that a simple exercise like this that draws out the people we turn to when we face tough times. This exercise can also help to equalise people with different roles and backgrounds in a room, and how they play diverse and critical roles in responding to domestic abuse. The Islington Met representative brought this exercise back to her own staff team. When discussing how to respond to the situation of a woman experiencing domestic violence, she asked them to first map out the people in their lives, and then to consider those in the woman’s life. We also mapped out the multiple systems involved in domestic abuse – society, community, family, public systems, and reflected how all need considering in the work of the partnership. One recurrent theme has been around children, and the ways they are inextricably linked to and often missed in this field.
Now, with a strong base and rich learning continuously generated, the partners are ready for action. That’s indicated by two things.
Firstly, the four shifts we are ready to make in the programme:
Moving from focusing on problems, to solutions
From focusing on I – the role of the individual and their story- to we – how everybody thinks and acts about domestic abuse
From what is happening now, to what can happen in the future
And from widening from public systems to thinking about the whole system, including family members, neighbours and civil society.
“In this approach, survivors are not just telling their story, but reflecting on how to use learning to make the lives of other women in similar circumstances better.”
Secondly, the ideas and focus areas identified by the partners. One category we have defined together is about how to identify system barriers to women’s agency, injecting learning from the past and the women’s experiences of domestic abuse to generate new ways of tackling those blocks. Another set of ideas is about changing conversations around domestic abuse in communities, disseminating reliable information and when possible, creating ways for women to come together to support each other.
And the action has already started! On 15h August at the Angel Central we will be hosting a ‘Conversation Wall’ with two questions posed to the public:
What can we do as a society to tackle domestic abuse?
Do you know someone who has been affected by domestic abuse?
We will be inviting residents of Islington passing by to stop and add their answers on post-its. We are excited to open the conversation the partnership has been having beyond itself, and into the borough of Islington. Please come and share your perspective!
If you are unable to attend the event, please share your thoughts via our Google form.
One more reflection
As You Are\As the World Is
It feels like a lot of our conversation circled back to the idea of engaging with someone as they are. To see them with their weaknesses and strengths. With the things that hurt them, and beyond those. To engage with the narratives they built about their selves (survivor) and to look deeper for, sometimes helping to surface, other versions.
To do this, we also need to engage with how the world is, not how we imagine it or would like it to be. To listen to a woman with experience of domestic abuse and leave space to be challenged (learning, not blame) whilst you acknowledge the fear and pain (at hearing the hurt she has experienced about which you cannot do anything apart from bearing witness) hidden in the frustration of apparently going off topic. Seeing the world as it is, and the person as they are, requires allowing ourselves to be part of the interaction; the self who does not hide behind the right words, the organisation, the system. This partnership work demands of us to bring not just our organisational self but the self who is vulnerable and human.
Dr. Rebeca Sandu is a social researcher and co-founder of Ratio, the learning partner for Cripplegate’s Domestic Abuse Development Partner programme. Rebeca co-led the Inquiry into Young People Facing Severe and Multiple Disadvantage for Lankelly Chase and with 25 young people with experience of homelessness, substance misuse, family breakdown, and mental ill-health. Her work focuses on the role of relationships in the lives of people facing the greatest disadvantage. Rebeca is the author of A Relational Worker, a summary of five academic papers about how one to one relationships change human health and development, and who is good at relating. She regularly writes on Conversations that Count Substack, a decade long exploration of the journey from talking about relationships to measuring them.
The Development Partner Programme (2022-2027), co-funded by Cripplegate Foundation and City Bridge Foundation, explores how a funder, together with some of its funded partners, could work more closely together to make a deeper impact in improving lives for Islington residents. In other words, it explores how to embed the How Not What relational approach to positively impact the experience of survivors and those working with them.
