Fulfilling Lives have gained valuable insight into new ways of providing specialist domestic abuse support for women with multiple and complex needs, through a collaborative pilot project with RISE and BHT’s Phase One. RISE is a Brighton based service for people affected by domestic abuse and Phase One is a high support hostel for homeless people in the city.
The pilot project centred around supporting non-specialist frontline workers with a bespoke training package and co-locating a RISE assertive outreach worker for one day a week at Phase One hostel. Domestic abuse is one of the leading causes of homelessness for women and women in hostels need tailored support – this pilot had a clear impact on how hostel workers provided that support. The outreach worker’s expertise and knowledge fed into how key workers engaged with women who had experience domestic abuse, and gave a space for complex domestic violence cases to be discussed.
Fulfilling Lives provided monitoring and evidence gathering support to RISE and Phase One before, during and after the new initiatives were implemented. The aim was to measure the impact on non-specialist frontline staff of having access to the expertise and knowledge of a professionally trained domestic abuse worker.
The full report below explores some of the impacts that the interventions had on staff and clients. These include all Phase One staff showing an increased knowledge, understanding and confidence in dealing with domestic violence cases, increased trust between clients and workers, and incidents of domestic violence being reported to RISE more quickly.
Rebecca Rieley, Fulfilling Lives Systems Change Lead said:
Fulfilling Lives is committed to continue working with partners like Rise and Phase One to support in finding new ways of working and testing new ideas to help improve the situation for women who have multiple complex needs and experience domestic abuse and violence.
Download the full report here.
