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In the second of our 16 blogs for 16 days, IRISi CEO Medina Johnson explains the vital importance of the Look Beyond campaign and its legacy.

Many of us know the statistics: 25% of women will experience domestic violence and abuse (DVA) at some point in their lives. Two women are killed every week at the hands of a current or former partner, or adult family member.  Behind each statistic is a woman, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a mother, a grandmother, an auntie.  Most of these women will have had recent contact with health services. How many of them will have found it difficult to say what was happening for them at home during their appointment?  How many of them wanted someone to look beyond what they were saying? How many women will have sat with a doctor or nurse who felt uncomfortable to look beyond and ask their patient about what was happening for them at home or whether they felt frightened or controlled by anyone because they didn’t think they had the right words or knowledge of the next steps to take? How many women were missed?   We know that DVA impacts both the mental and physical health of those it affects and that this has ramifications throughout the family.  In cold, hard business speak, we also know that DVA also costs the NHS a lot of money in terms of appointments, chronic illness and prescriptions.

Clinicians want to know how to best support patients and how to offer support.  This is why they become medics.  We can’t expect them to simply know what to do to support patients affected by DVA without offering training and support and onward referral pathways.  We need to support our clinical colleagues to look beyond and we need commissioners to fund this support in a sustainable way.

Medina Johnson, CEO, IRISi

Dealing with DVA is everyone’s business.  The NHS cannot and should not manage this alone.  Collaboration and partnerships between health services and the specialist DVA sector are vital in supporting professionals and patients, and in supporting health care professionals to support their patients.

IRISi is leading on an event called Look Beyond that will take place during the 16 days of action including and following the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women 2019. The event takes place in Bristol on 3rdDecember as part of a project called Pathfinder*.  

Why are we encouraging health care professional to look beyond and what do we mean by this?  Well, quite simply, we are calling on all health care professionals and those who work in health care services to look beyond what they see and hear when they are speaking with, meeting with and consulting with a patient.  If a clinician recognises that what they are hearing or seeing doesn’t feel right then it probably isn’t and so we are encouraging them to be professionally curious.  Women tell us repeatedly that they want to be asked about what is going on for them and are, at best, puzzled when nobody does and, at worst, left feeling alone, hopeless and unworthy of help.  Looking beyond will help to address this and better support those affected by DVA.

IRIS (see www.irisi.org) started as a research trial and successfully evidenced that a programme of training general practice teams linked to simple referral pathways into direct specialist support work.   IRIS trained clinicians know how to recognise patients affected by DVA, ask them about this, respond in an open and understanding way, offer a referral to an IRIS Advocate Educator and make a record of this.  Our work at IRISi and with partners running IRIS programmes in over 40 areas in the last decade gives us the real-world evidence that this approach, looking beyond, works too.  Over 1,000 general practices in England and Wales have now been IRIS trained and over 15,000 women have been referred into a local IRIS Advocate Educator. Clinicians and women both tell us that they benefit:

“ IRIS changes lives. It makes it possible for GPs and nurses to do something that before was ‘too hard’. It teaches us to recognise the huge impacts of domestic abuse, how to ask about it safely, how to respond, and most importantly, how to refer to the IRIS advocate educators. The feedback I have received from GPs who have taken part in the training and who are implementing IRIS has been overwhelmingly positive and they consistently highly recommend it to colleagues.”  IRIS trained clinician

I would not have even thought I was experiencing abuse if my doctor didn’t ask me. He was great and explained it to me and introduced me to you. From then on, I feel like I get stronger every single time I walk into my surgery. Thank you.” IRIS service user

Let’s pledge during these 16 days of action to each encourage someone to look beyond to improve the health care response to DVA.

* Pathfinder is working to provide tools, training and information on what best practice responses to domestic violence and abuse (DVA) look like from general practice, the acute health care sector and mental health services.

Pathfinder is made up of a consortium of five national VAWG organisations:  AVA, Imkaan, IRISi, SafeLives and Standing Together.

See www.pathfindertoolkit.org

Medina Johnson is CEO at IRISi.

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Partners

AVA
AVA
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
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
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 University of Bristol CAPC
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
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
STADV
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
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.

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