IRIS is now running in Lancashire in partnership with Lancashire Victim Services, Fylde Coast Women’s Aid, and the Wish Centre!

Collaboration is a keyword that defines very well the work developed by IRISi, including IRIS, our flagship programme. The sense of partnership necessary for the improvement of the healthcare response to Domestic Abuse (DA) is something so intrinsic to the nature of our interventions that it is also reflected within the regions where they become reality, as happened recently in Lancashire.

Aiming to cover the areas that make up the region, including Blackpool, and Blackburn with Darwen, three third sector specialist services have come together to develop and successfully submit to a funding application to implement the IRIS programme. As a result, since February 2023, Lancashire Victim Services, Fylde Coast Women’s Aid and The Wish Centre are working collaboratively to ensure that more and more GPs can identify the signs of DA and have a simple referral route for their patients to reach the most adequate support.

Deputy director of safeguarding for the NHS in Lancashire and South Cumbria, Jane Jones explained that “IRIS will provide in-house DA training to 72 general practice teams across Lancashire as well as a named Advocate Educator to whom patients can be referred for support. Lancashire Victim Services will work in partnership with two other local third-sector DA service providers, Fylde Coast Women’s Aid (Blackpool) and The Wish Centre (Blackburn with Darwen) to deliver the programme, which will help to improve our response to victims and families and also increase practitioners’ confidence to ask questions and support appropriately.”

“The rollout should help to reduce barriers for victims and support referrals to domestic abuse support services, positively impacting over 700,000 residents in our region.” – Jane Jones, Deputy Director of Safeguarding for the NHS in Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Lancashire Victim Services: “Strong collaborative working relationships combined with extensive experience”

Research has shown that victims and survivors of DA commonly visit their doctors with symptoms that are indicators of the abuse they are experiencing. However, very few actually disclose what they’re going through, and some do not realise their conditions are a result of domestic abuse. “By making GPs and other staff more aware of the signs and more confident to ask questions, we create more opportunities for victims to access the help and support they need. Not everybody will be willing, ready or able to leave an abusive relationship, but this programme will enable them to seek confidential information about their options with a trained and experienced advocate so that they can make an informed decision”, says the Lancashire Victim Services team, which made the first move to bring IRIS to their area.

In the fiscal year ending in April 2022, this service received more than 13,500 referrals from victims and survivors of domestic abuse only in Lancashire. If these people had been identified through General Practices, it is possible that their pathway to receive support could have been shorter. Once Lancashire Victim Services spotted the funding opportunity for the IRIS Programme, they saw a chance to address this possibility and, also, to work side-by-side with other specialist partners. “As the project extends across Lancashire and surrounding regions, we knew we wanted to work closely with the local domestic abuse service providers in Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwin, namely Fylde Coast Women’s Aid and the Wish Centre”, they explain.

“Strong collaborative working relationships combined with extensive experience and knowledge of delivering services in our respective areas has made for an excellent partnership and we are confident that this will help us to reach many victims who might otherwise have not come forward for support”. – Lancashire Victim Services team

Fylde Coast Women’s Aid: “reaching more individuals in need of help and identifying further gaps to improve the overall response to domestic abuse”

Figures from the latest Joint Strategic Needs Assessment demonstrate that DA across Blackpool is alarming – in total, 3647 incidents were reported in the fiscal year ending in April 2021, a rate of 26.4 per 1000. “Blackpool is a coastal town with well-documented high levels of deprivation: lower life expectancy, child poverty and high levels of tooth decay, long-term unemployment, poor housing, drug and alcohol abuse, high rates of teenage pregnancy and crime”, says the Fylde Coast Women’s Aid team.

In 2019, FCWA had already delivered the IRIS Programme and, even though it faced the challenges of working through the pandemic, the project was highly successful. “It allowed FCWA to identify ‘hidden victims’, namely older women who, in accessing their GP surgeries regularly, then disclosed abuse and were able to access support. FCWA is confident that the IRIS programme will help to reach more individuals in need of help and identify further gaps to improve the overall response to domestic abuse.”

“FCWA is looking forward to the rollout of a highly successful IRIS project across Blackpool, leading to further funding for the project as it is clearly a model that works.” – Fylde Coast Women’s Aid team

The Wish Centre: “we expect that the GP surgeries will see the benefits of being an IRIS practice for their patients and themselves”

In the last year, the Wish Centre received a total of 3,376 referrals from victims and survivors of Domestic Abuse. “Our hope is that by taking services to the heart of communities, such as GP surgeries, it will let those needing support know that there is help readily available. Often domestic abuse services are sought out at crisis point, but by making services more visible and accessible it gives a greater opportunity for early intervention leading to reduced harm and lowered risk”, says their team.

“We expect that the programme will be rolled out smoothly and quickly, that the GP surgeries will see the benefits of being an IRIS practice for their patients and themselves, that awareness of the prevalence of DA in the area becomes widely known and, ultimately, that support is available for those impacted.” – The Wish Centre team

To bring IRIS to your area, please get in touch with us at info@irisi.org.

Partners

AVA

AVA is an expert, groundbreaking and independent charity working across the UK.

Their vision is a world without gender based violence and abuse. They aim to inspire innovation and collaboration and encourage and enable direct service providers to help end gender based violence and abuse particularly against women and girls.AVA’s work is focused around those areas where they can make the best contribution to ending violence and abuse. They do this by making sure that survivors get the help and support they need in the here and now, through providing innovative training that has a proven direct impact on the professional practice of people supporting survivors of violence and abuse

developing a range of toolkits, e-learning and other material that supports professionals to provide effective and appropriate support to survivors of violence and abuse

using our influence and networks to ensure survivors voices are heard. We work closely with AVA in many areas including the Pathfinder project

https://avaproject.org.uk

SafeLives

SafeLives are a national charity dedicated to ending domestic abuse, for good. We combine insight from services, survivors and statistics to support people to become safe, well and rebuild their lives. Since 2005, SafeLives has worked with organisations across the country to transform the response to domestic abuse, with over 60,000 victims at highest risk of murder or serious harm now receiving co-ordinated support annually. SafeLives are members of the Pathfinder consortium.

http://www.safelives.org.uk/about-us

IMKAAN

Imkaan is a UK-based, Black feminist organisation. We are the only national second-tier women’s organisation dedicated to addressing violence against Black and minoritised women and girls i.e. women and girls which are defined in policy terms as Black and ‘Minority Ethnic’ (BME). The organisation holds nearly two decades of experience of working around issues such as domestic violence, forced marriage and ‘honour-based’ violence.

They work at local, national and international level, and in partnership with a range of organisations, to improve policy and practice responses to Black and minoritised women and girls. Imkaan works with it’s members to represent the expertise and perspectives of frontline, specialist and dedicated Black and minoritised women’s organisations that work to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. Imkaan delivers a unique package of support which includes: quality assurance; accredited training and peer education; sustainability support to frontline Black and minoritised organisations; and facilitation of space for community engagement and development. They are a part of the Pathfinder Consortium.

https://www.imkaan.org.uk

The University of Bristol CAPC

The Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC) is a leading centre for primary care research in the UK, one of nine forming the NIHR School for Primary Care Research. It is part of Bristol Medical School, an internationally recognised centre of excellence for population health research and teaching.

A dedicated team of researchers at the Centre work on domestic abuse projects and IRISi is a co-collaborator and partner on some of these projects including ReProvide, HERA and DRiDVA.

The Health Foundation

The Health Foundation is an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK. The Health Foundation’s Exploring Social Franchising programme aims to generate a deeper understanding of the potential of social franchising models for scaling effective health and social care interventions within the NHS.

We are one of four project teams participating in the programme to develop a social franchise to enable the sustainable spread of our intervention, the IRIS Programme. We receive funding and support from the Health Foundation, including technical expertise on social franchising, and attend programme learning events. The Health Foundation has also commissioned a programme-wide evaluation to support understanding of the use of social franchising in the UK health and care system. We and our franchisees will support the evaluation through co-designing data collection requirements, providing access to data as requested, hosting site visits and attending learning events.

https://www.health.org.uk

STADV

Standing Together Against Domestic Violence is a UK charity bringing communities together to end domestic abuse. They bring local services together to keep people safe

Most public services weren’t designed with domestic abuse in mind, and they often struggle to keep people safe. Poor communication and gaps between services put survivors at risk.

STADV aim to end domestic abuse by changing the way that local services respond to it. They do this through an approach that they pioneered, called the Coordinated Community Response. The Coordinated Community Response brings services together to ensure local systems truly keep survivors safe, hold abusers to account, and prevent domestic abuse.

Their model of a coordinated local partnership to tackle and ultimately prevent domestic violence is now widely accepted as best practice. They are also a part of the Pathfinder consortium.

http://www.standingtogether.org.uk

Spring Impact

Spring Impact is a not-for-profit social enterprise born out of the frustration of seeing social organisations constantly reinventing the wheel and wasting scarce resources. Spring Impact uses a combination of tested commercial and social principles and extensive practical expertise to support organisations to identify, design and implement the right social replication model to scale their social impact.