Labour has a chance to stop domestic abuse at its roots – here's how

In the last year alone, 2.1 million people aged 16-plus were recorded as victim-survivors of domestic abuse. This number reveals a national crisis, but the reality is even worse. National statistics are skewed by changes in police reporting, and many victim-survivors do not feel supported to report in the first place – the true figure could be double that on record.

All of us will know someone who has experienced domestic abuse, and if you follow that to its natural conclusion, we will all know someone who has been abusive too.

For decades, the responsibility for action has been left to survivors, most often women, to leave, to seek emotional support, and to report their abusers to authorities. This system relies on services structured around the inevitability of male violence against women, services which are then funded so poorly that they cannot help the never-ending revolving door of victims.

A new government holds the power to change this story. To take the view that domestic abuse is an issue to be solved rather than a norm to be accepted, and to put action behind that to make real change.

If the new government are to achieve their commitment of halving violence against women and girls in a decade, they will need to do more than fund support services (though that is an essential place to start). They will need to provide political, social and sector-wide solutions to the growing problem of gendered violence that address the roots of the harm.

At Cranstoun we look for radical, innovative approaches to social justice issues by getting to the heart of the problem. When it comes to domestic abuse we consider what creates a culture that normalises violence and coercion in relationships, and how to hold perpetrators to account. We look to the deeply-held gendered roles in our society, and social structures built on power, wealth and control that celebrate competition and individualism over community and care. And we recognise the lack of positive role-modelling of healthy relationship behaviours, in the home, in school curriculums and in popular culture. We bring this learning into our work to place responsibility on perpetrators of abuse through behaviour-change interventions, measured by the subsequent safety of the victim-survivor.

For Labour to tackle these roots they will need to take a whole-society approach to prevention, working with experts across sectors as diverse as housing, education, criminal justice and substance use as well as the core gender-based violence sector.

When more than one in four victim-survivors of domestic abuse didn’t leave an abuser because they had nowhere to go, Labour’s commitment to affordable housing becomes all the more urgent. When substance use features in just under half of all UK domestic homicides, meaningful substance use intervention and treatment can save multiple lives. And when exposure to misogynistic views online makes children almost five times more likely to view hurting someone physically as acceptable, whole-school approaches to preventing gender-based harm alongside expanded support for young people through youth hubs takes on an additional importance in protecting the relationships of the future.

Holistic approaches in healthcare help to better diagnose and treat a problem – the same is true of the public health issue of gendered violence. Appropriate and long-term funding for specialist abuse organisations is vital to the healing of survivors – and these organisations need a strong societal safety-net to signpost survivors to, and a coherent nationwide programme of perpetrator interventions.

This joined-up working results in real lightbulb moments, too – like the realisation that re-housing perpetrators rather than requiring victims to uproot their lives not only places more autonomy in the hands of a survivor, but also saves a significant amount of money. Our Restart housing pilot has shown promising results, with 77% of survivors reporting improved wellbeing and 84% of perpetrators modifying their behaviour. Supporting broader approaches like this will take political bravery, but the impact could be huge.

Taking a radical, whole-society approach to ending domestic abuse will be costly, but so is abuse: it is estimated to cost £78bn a year in England and Wales alone. More to the point, what price do we as a country put on a life? When three women are murdered every fortnight by a partner or ex-partner, I would say the cost is already far too high.

There is an opportunity, if this government is willing to take it, to dramatically change our approach to domestic abuse. At Cranstoun, we genuinely believe that a fairer world is possible, and that it will take everyone playing a part to get us there: from the leaders of our country to the children in our schools. So we look to the new government to put their energy behind their promises, and approach abuse as a problem to be solved, not as an inevitability.

Caitlin McCullough is a domestic abuse policy worker at social justice charity Cranstoun.

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